The Lincoln Lawyer

TWENTY-SEVEN

The check from Roulet cleared. On the first day of trial I had more money in my bank account than I’d ever had in my life. If I wanted, I could drop the bus benches and go with billboards. I could also take the back cover of the yellow pages instead of the half page I had inside. I could afford it. I finally had a franchise case and it had paid off. In terms of money, that is. The loss of Raul Levin would forever make this franchise a losing proposition.

We had been through three days of jury selection and were now ready to put on the show. The trial was scheduled for another three days at the most-two for the prosecution and one for the defense. I had told the judge that I would need a day to put my case before the jury, but the truth was, most of my work would be done during the prosecution’s presentation.

There’s always an electric feel to the start of a trial. A nervousness that attacks deep in the gut. So much is on the line. Reputation, personal freedom, the integrity of the system itself. Something about having those twelve strangers sit in judgment of your life and work always jumps things up inside. And I am referring to me, the defense attorney-the judgment of the defendant is a whole other thing. I’ve never gotten used to it, and the truth is, I never want to. I can only liken it to the anxiety and tension of standing at the front of a church on your wedding day. I’d had that experience twice and I was reminded of it every time a judge called a trial to order.

Though my experience in trial work severely outweighed my opponent’s, there was no mistake about where I stood. I was one man standing before the giant maw of the system. Without a doubt I was the underdog. Yes, it was true that I faced a prosecutor in his first major felony trial. But that advantage was evened and then some by the power and might of the state. At the prosecutor’s command were the forces of the entire justice system. And against this all I had was myself. And a guilty client.

I sat next to Louis Roulet at the defense table. We were alone. I had no second and no investigator behind me-out of some strange loyalty to Raul Levin I had not hired a replacement. I didn’t really need one, either. Levin had given me everything I needed. The trial and how it played out would serve as a last testament to his skills as an investigator.

In the first row of the gallery sat C. C. Dobbs and Mary Alice Windsor. In accordance with a pretrial ruling, the judge was allowing Roulet’s mother to be in the courtroom during opening statements only. Because she was listed as a defense witness, she would not be allowed to listen to any of the testimony that followed. She would remain in the hallway outside, with her loyal lapdog Dobbs at her side, until I called her to the stand.

Also in the first row but not seated next to them was my own support section: my ex-wife Lorna Taylor. She had gotten dressed up in a navy suit and white blouse. She looked beautiful and could have blended in easily with the phalanx of female attorneys who descended on the courthouse every day. But she was there for me and I loved her for it.

The rest of the rows in the gallery were sporadically crowded. There were a few print reporters there to grab quotes from the opening statements and a few attorneys and citizen onlookers. No TV had shown up. The trial had not yet drawn more than cursory attention from the public, and this was good. This meant our strategy of publicity containment had worked well.

Roulet and I were silent as we waited for the judge to take the bench and order the jury into the box so that we could begin. I was attempting to calm myself by rehearsing what I wanted to say to the jurors. Roulet was staring straight ahead at the State of California seal affixed to the front of the judge’s bench.

The courtroom clerk took a phone call, said a few words and then hung up.

“Two minutes, people,” he said loudly. “Two minutes.”

When a judge called ahead to the courtroom, that meant people should be in their positions and ready to go. We were. I glanced over at Ted Minton at the prosecution’s table and saw he was doing the same thing that I was doing. Calming himself by rehearsing. I leaned forward and studied the notes on the legal pad in front of me. Then Roulet unexpectedly leaned forward and almost right into me. He spoke in a whisper, even though it wasn’t necessary yet.

“This is it, Mick.”

“I know.”

Since the death of Raul Levin, my relationship with Roulet had been one of cold endurance. I put up with him because I had to. But I saw him as little as possible in the days and weeks before the trial, and spoke to him as little as possible once it started. I knew the one weakness in my plan was my own weakness. I feared that any interaction with Roulet could lead me into acting out my anger and desire to personally, physically avenge my friend. The three days of jury selection had been torture. Day after day I had to sit right next to him and listen to his condescending comments about prospective jurors. The only way I got through it was to pretend he wasn’t there.

“You ready?” he asked me.

“Trying to be,” I said. “Are you?”

“I’m ready. But I wanted to tell you something before we began.”

I looked at him. He was too close to me. It would have been invasive even if I loved him and not hated him. I leaned back.

“What?”

He followed me, leaning back next to me.

“You’re my lawyer, right?”

I leaned forward, trying to get away.

“Louis, what is this? We’ve been together on this more than two months and now we’re sitting here with a jury picked and ready for trial. You have paid me more than a hundred and fifty grand and you have to ask if I’m your lawyer? Of course I’m your lawyer. What is it? What is wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

He leaned forward and continued.

“I mean, like, if you’re my lawyer, I can tell you stuff and you have to hold it as a secret, even if it’s a crime I tell you about. More than one crime. It’s covered by the attorney-client relationship, right?”

I felt the low rumbling of upset in my stomach.

“Yes, Louis, that’s right-unless you are going to tell me about a crime about to be committed. In that case I can be relieved of the code of ethics and can inform the police so they can stop the crime. In fact, it would be my duty to inform them. A lawyer is an officer of the court. So what is it that you want to tell me? You just heard we got the two-minute warning. We’re about to start here.”

“I’ve killed people, Mick.”

I looked at him for a moment.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

He was right. I had heard him. And I shouldn’t have acted surprised. I already knew he had killed people. Raul Levin was among them and he had even used my gun-though I hadn’t figured out how he had defeated the GPS bracelet on his ankle. I was just surprised he had decided to tell me in such a matter-of-fact manner two minutes before his trial was called to order.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. “I’m about to try to defend you in this thing and you -”

“Because I know you already know. And because I know what your plan is.”

“My plan? What plan?”

He smiled slyly at me.

“Come on, Mick. It’s simple. You defend me on this case. You do your best, you get paid the big bucks, you win and I walk away. But then, once it’s all over and you’ve got your money in the bank, you turn against me because I’m not your client anymore. You throw me to the cops so you can get Jesus Menendez out and redeem yourself.”

I didn’t respond.

“Well, I can’t let that happen,” he said quietly. “Now, I am yours forever, Mick. I am telling you I’ve killed people, and guess what? Martha Renteria was one of them. I gave her just what she deserved, and if you go to the cops or use what I’ve told you against me, then you won’t be practicing law for very long. Yes, you might succeed in raising Jesus from the dead. But I’ll never be prosecuted because of your misconduct. I believe it is called ‘fruit of the poisonous tree,’ and you are the tree, Mick.”

I still couldn’t respond. I just nodded again. Roulet had certainly thought it through. I wondered how much help he had gotten from Cecil Dobbs. He had obviously had somebody coach him on the law.

I leaned toward him and whispered.

“Follow me.”

I got up and walked quickly through the gate and toward the rear door of the courtroom. From behind I heard the clerk’s voice.

“Mr. Haller? We’re about to start. The judge -”

“One minute,” I called out without turning around.

I held one finger up as well. I then pushed through the doors into the dimly lit vestibule designed as a buffer to keep hallway sounds from the courtroom. A set of double doors on the other side led to the hallway. I moved to the side and waited for Roulet to step into the small space.

As soon as he came through the door I grabbed him and spun him into the wall. I held him pressed against it with both of my hands on his chest.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing?”

“Take it easy, Mick. I just thought we should know where we both -”

“You son of a bitch. You killed Raul and all he was doing was working for you! He was trying to help you!”

I wanted to bring my hands up to his neck and choke him out on the spot.

“You’re right about one thing. I am a son of a bitch. But you are wrong about everything else, Mick. Levin wasn’t trying to help me. He was trying to bury me and he was getting too close. He got what he deserved for that.”

I thought about Levin’s last message on my phone at home. I’ve got Jesus’s ticket out of the Q. Whatever it was that he had found, it had gotten him killed. And it had gotten him killed before he could deliver the information to me.

“How did you do it? You’re confessing everything to me here, then I want to know how you did it. How’d you beat the GPS? Your bracelet showed you weren’t even near Glendale.”

He smiled at me, like a boy with a toy he wasn’t going to share.

“Let’s just say that is proprietary information and leave it at that. You never know, I may have to pull the old Houdini act again.”

In his words I heard the threat and in his smile I saw the evil that Raul Levin had seen.

“Don’t get any ideas, Mick,” he said. “As you probably know, I do have an insurance policy.”

I pressed harder against him and leaned in closer.

“Listen, you piece of shit. I want the gun back. You think you have this thing wired? You don’t have shit. I’ve got it wired. And you won’t make it through the week if I don’t get that gun back. You got that?”

Roulet slowly reached up, grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands off his chest. He started straightening his shirt and tie.

“Might I suggest an agreement,” he said calmly. “At the end of this trial I walk out of the courtroom a free man. I continue to maintain my freedom, and in exchange for this, the gun never falls into, shall we say, the wrong hands.”

Meaning Lankford and Sobel.

“Because I’d really hate to see that happen, Mick. A lot of people depend on you. A lot of clients. And you, of course, wouldn’t want to go where they are going.”

I stepped back from him, using all my will not to raise my fists and attack. I settled for a voice that quietly seethed with all of my anger and hate.

“I promise you,” I said, “if you fuck with me you will never be free of me. Are we clear on that?”

Roulet started to smile. But before he could respond the door from the courtroom opened and Deputy Meehan, the bailiff, looked in.

“The judge is on the bench,” he said sternly. “She wants you in here. Now.”

I looked back at Roulet.

“I said, are we clear?”

“Yes, Mick,” he said good-naturedly. “We’re crystal clear.”

I stepped away from him and entered the courtroom, striding up the aisle to the gate. Judge Constance Fullbright was staring me down every step of the way.

“So nice of you to consider joining us this morning, Mr. Haller.”

Where had I heard that before?

“I am sorry, Your Honor,” I said as I came through the gate. “I had an emergency situation with my client. We had to conference.”

“Client conferences can be handled right at the defense table,” she responded.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I don’t think we are starting off correctly here, Mr. Haller. When my clerk announces that we will be in session in two minutes, then I expect everyone-including defense attorneys and their clients-to be in place and ready to go.”

“I apologize, Your Honor.”

“That’s not good enough, Mr. Haller. Before the end of court today I want you to pay a visit to my clerk with your checkbook. I am fining you five hundred dollars for contempt of court. You are not in charge of this courtroom, sir. I am.”

“Your Honor -”

“Now, can we please have the jury,” she ordered, cutting off my protest.

The bailiff opened the jury room door and the twelve jurors and two alternates started filing into the jury box. I leaned over to Roulet, who had just sat down, and whispered.

“You owe me five hundred dollars.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ted Minton’s opening statement was a by-the-numbers model of prosecutorial overkill. Rather than tell the jurors what evidence he would present and what it would prove, the prosecutor tried to tell them what it all meant. He was going for a big picture and this was almost always a mistake. The big picture involves inferences and suggestions. It extrapolates givens to the level of suspicions. Any experienced prosecutor with a dozen or more felony trials under his belt will tell you to keep it small. You want them to convict, not necessarily to understand.

“What this case is about is a predator,” he told them. “Louis Ross Roulet is a man who on the night of March sixth was stalking prey. And if it were not for the sheer determination of a woman to survive, we would be here prosecuting a murder case.”

I noticed early on that Minton had picked up a scorekeeper. This is what I call a juror who incessantly takes notes during trial. An opening statement is not an offer of evidence and Judge Fullbright had so admonished the jury, but the woman in the first seat in the front row had been writing since the start of Minton’s statement. This was good. I like scorekeepers because they document just what the lawyers say will be presented and proved at trial and at the end they go back to check. They keep score.

I looked at the jury chart I had filled in the week before and saw that the scorekeeper was Linda Truluck, a homemaker from Reseda. She was one of only three women on the jury. Minton had tried hard to keep the female content to a minimum because, I believe, he feared that once it was established in trial that Regina Campo had been offering sexual services for money, he might lose the females’ sympathy and ultimately their votes on a verdict. I believed he was probably correct in that assumption and I worked just as diligently to get women on the panel. We both ended up using all of our twenty challenges and it was probably the main reason it took three days to seat a jury. In the end I got three women on the panel and only needed one to head off a conviction.

“Now, you are going to hear testimony from the victim herself about her lifestyle being one that we would not condone,” Minton told the jurors. “The bottom line is she was selling sex to the men she invited to her home. But I want you to remember that what the victim in this case did for a living is not what this trial is about. Anyone can be a victim of a violent crime. Anyone. No matter what someone does for a living, the law does not allow for them to be beaten, to be threatened at knifepoint or to be put in fear of their lives. It doesn’t matter what they do to make money. They enjoy the same protections that we all do.”

It was pretty clear to me that Minton didn’t even want to use the word prostitution or prostitute for fear it would hurt his case. I wrote the word down on the legal pad I would take with me to the lectern when I made my statement. I planned to make up for the prosecutor’s omissions.

Minton gave an overview of the evidence. He spoke about the knife with the defendant’s initials on the blade. He talked about the blood found on his left hand. And he warned the jurors not to be fooled by the defense’s efforts to confuse or muddle the evidence.

“This is a very clear-cut and straightforward case,” he said as he was winding up. “You have a man who attacked a woman in her home. His plan was to rape and then kill her. It is only by the grace of God that she will be here to tell you the story.”

With that he thanked them for their attention and took his seat at the prosecution table. Judge Fullbright looked at her watch and then looked at me. It was 11:40 and she was probably weighing whether to go to a break or let me proceed with my opener. One of the judge’s chief jobs during trial is jury management. The judge’s duty is to make sure the jury is comfortable and engaged. Lots of breaks, short and long, is often the answer.

I had known Connie Fullbright for at least twelve years, since long before she was a judge. She had been both a prosecutor and defense lawyer. She knew both sides. Aside from being overly quick with contempt citations, she was a good and fair judge-until it came to sentencing. You went into Fullbright’s court knowing you were on an even level with the prosecution. But if the jury convicted your client, be prepared for the worst. Fullbright was one of the toughest sentencing judges in the county. It was as if she were punishing you and your client for wasting her time with a trial. If there was any room within the sentencing guidelines, she always went to the max, whether it was prison or probation. It had gotten her a telling sobriquet among the defense pros who worked the Van Nuys courthouse. They called her Judge Fullbite.

“Mr. Haller,” she said, “are you planning to reserve your statement?”

“No, Your Honor, but I believe I am going to be pretty quick.”

“Very good,” she said. “Then we’ll hear from you and then we’ll take lunch.”

The truth was I didn’t know how long I would be. Minton had been about forty minutes and I knew I would take close to that. But I had told the judge I’d be quick simply because I didn’t like the idea of the jury going to lunch with only the prosecutor’s side of the story to think about as they chewed their hamburgers and tuna salads.

I got up and went to the lectern located between the prosecution and defense tables. The courtroom was one of the recently rehabbed spaces in the old courthouse. It had twin jury boxes on either side of the bench. Everything was done in a blond wood, including the rear wall behind the bench. The door to the judge’s chambers was almost hidden in the wall, its lines camouflaged in the lines and grain of the wood. The doorknob was the only giveaway.

Fullbright ran her trials like a federal judge. Attorneys were not allowed to approach witnesses without permission and never allowed to approach the jury box. They were required to speak from the lectern only.

Standing now at the lectern, the jury was in the box to my right and closer to the prosecution table than to the defense’s. This was fine with me. I didn’t want them to get too close a look at Roulet. I wanted him to be a bit of a mystery to them.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I began, “my name is Michael Haller and I am representing Mr. Roulet during this trial. I am happy to tell you that this trial will most likely be a quick one. Just a few more days of your time will be taken. In the long run you will probably see that it took us longer to pick all of you than it will take to present both sides of the case. The prosecutor, Mr. Minton, seemed to spend his time this morning telling you about what he thinks all the evidence means and who Mr. Roulet really is. I would advise you to simply sit back, listen to the evidence and let your common sense tell you what it all means and who Mr. Roulet is.”

I kept my eyes moving from juror to juror. I rarely looked down at the pad I had placed on the lectern. I wanted them to think I was shooting the breeze with them, talking off the top of my head.

“Usually, what I like to do is reserve my opening statement. In a criminal trial the defense always has the option of giving an opener at the start of the trial, just as Mr. Minton did, or right before presenting the defense’s case. Normally, I would take the second option. I would wait and make my statement before trotting out all the defense’s witnesses and evidence. But this case is different. It’s different because the prosecution’s case is also going to be the defense’s case. You’ll certainly hear from some defense witnesses, but the heart and soul of this case is going to be the prosecution’s evidence and witnesses and how you decide to interpret them. I guarantee you that a version of the events and evidence far different from what Mr. Minton just outlined is going to emerge in this courtroom. And when it comes time to present the defense’s case, it probably won’t even be necessary.”

I checked the scorekeeper and saw her pencil moving across the page of her notebook.

“I think that what you are going to find here this week is that this whole case will come down to the actions and motivations of one person. A prostitute who saw a man with outward signs of wealth and chose to target him. The evidence will show this clearly and it will be shown by the prosecution’s own witnesses.”

Minton stood up and objected, saying I was going out of bounds in trying to impeach the state’s main witness with unsubstantiated accusations. There was no legal basis for the objection. It was just an amateurish attempt to send a message to the jury. The judge responded by inviting us to a sidebar.

We walked to the side of the bench and the judge flipped on a sound neutralizer which sent white noise from a speaker on the bench toward the jury and prevented them from hearing what was whispered in the sidebar. The judge was quick with Minton, like an assassin.

“Mr. Minton, I know you are new to felony trial work, so I see I will have to school you as we go. But don’t you ever object during an opening statement in my courtroom. This isn’t evidence he’s presenting. I don’t care if he says your own mother is the defendant’s alibi witness, you don’t object in front of my jury.”

“Your Hon-”

“That’s it. Go back.”

She rolled her seat back to the center of the bench and flicked off the white noise. Minton and I returned to our positions without further word.

“Objection overruled,” the judge said. “Continue, Mr. Haller, and let me remind you that you said you would be quick.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. That is still my plan.”

I referred to my notes and then looked back at the jury. Knowing that Minton would have been intimidated to silence by the judge, I decided to raise the rhetoric up a notch, go off notes and get directly to the windup.

“Ladies and gentlemen, in essence, what you will be deciding here is who the real predator was in this case. Mr. Roulet, a successful businessman with a spotless record, or an admitted prostitute with a successful business in taking money from men in exchange for sex. You will hear testimony that the alleged victim in this case was engaged in an act of prostitution with another man just moments before this supposed attack occurred. And you will hear testimony that within days of this supposedly life-threatening assault, she was back in business once again, trading sex for money.”

I glanced at Minton and saw he was doing a slow burn. He had his eyes downcast on the table in front of him and he was slowly shaking his head. I looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, could you instruct the prosecutor to refrain from demonstrating in front of the jury? I did not object or in any way try to distract the jury during his opening statement.”

“Mr. Minton,” the judge intoned, “please sit still and extend the courtesy to the defense that was extended to you.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Minton said meekly.

The jury had now seen the prosecutor slapped down twice and we weren’t even past openers. I took this as a good sign and it fed my momentum. I looked back at the jury and noticed that the scorekeeper was still writing.

“Finally, you will receive testimony from many of the state’s own witnesses that will provide a perfectly acceptable explanation for much of the physical evidence in this case. I am talking about the blood and about the knife Mr. Minton mentioned. Taken individually or as a whole, the prosecution’s own case will provide you with more than reasonable doubt about the guilt of my client. You can mark it down in your notebooks. I guarantee you will find that you have only one choice at the end of this case. And that is to find Mr. Roulet not guilty of these charges. Thank you.”

As I walked back to my seat I winked at Lorna Taylor. She nodded at me as if to say I had done well. My attention was then drawn to the two figures sitting two rows behind her. Lankford and Sobel. They had slipped in after I had first surveyed the gallery.

I took my seat and ignored the thumbs-up gesture given me by my client. My mind was on the two Glendale detectives, wondering what they were doing in the courtroom. Watching me? Waiting for me?

The judge dismissed the jury for lunch and everyone stood while the scorekeeper and her colleagues filed out. After they were gone Minton asked the judge for another sidebar. He wanted to try to explain his objection and repair the damage but not in open court. The judge said no.

“I’m hungry, Mr. Minton, and we’re past that now. Go to lunch.”

She left the bench, and the courtroom that had been so silent except for the voices of lawyers then erupted in chatter from the gallery and the court workers. I put my pad in my briefcase.

“That was really good,” Roulet said. “I think we’re already ahead of the game.”

I looked at him with dead eyes.

“It’s no game.”

“I know that. It’s just an expression. Listen, I am having lunch with Cecil and my mother. We would like you to join us.”

I shook my head.

“I have to defend you, Louis, but I don’t have to eat with you.”

I took my checkbook out of my briefcase and left him there. I walked around the table to the clerk’s station so that I could write out a check for five hundred dollars. The money didn’t hurt as much as I knew the bar review that follows any contempt citation would.

When I was finished I turned back to find Lorna waiting for me at the gate with a smile. We planned to go to lunch and then she would go back to manning the phone in her condo. In three days I would be back in business and needed clients. I was depending on her to start filling in my calendar.

“Looks like I better buy you lunch today,” she said.

I threw my checkbook into the briefcase and closed it. I joined her at the gate.

“That would be nice,” I said.

I pushed through the gate and checked the bench where I had seen Lankford and Sobel sitting a few moments before.

They were gone.

TWENTY-NINE

The prosecution began presenting its case to the jury in the afternoon session and very quickly Ted Minton’s strategy became clear to me. The first four witnesses were a 911 dispatch operator, the patrol officers who responded to Regina Campo’s call for help and the paramedic who treated her before she was transported to the hospital. In anticipation of the defense strategy, it was clear that Minton wanted to firmly establish that Campo had been brutally assaulted and was indeed the victim in this crime. It wasn’t a bad strategy. In most cases it would get the job done.

The dispatch operator was essentially used as the warm body needed to introduce a recording of Campo’s 911 call for help. Printed transcripts of the call were handed out to jurors so they could read along with a scratchy audio playback. I objected on the grounds that it was prejudicial to play the audio recording when the transcript would suffice but the judge quickly overruled me before Minton even had to counter. The recording was played and there was no doubt that Minton had started out of the gate strong as the jurors sat raptly listening to Campo scream and beg for help. She sounded genuinely distraught and scared. It was exactly what Minton wanted the jurors to hear and they certainly got it. I didn’t dare question the dispatcher on cross-examination because I knew it might give Minton the opportunity to play the recording again on redirect.

The two patrol officers who followed offered different testimony because they did separate things upon arriving at the Tarzana apartment complex in response to the 911 call. One primarily stayed with the victim while the other went up to the apartment and handcuffed the man Campo’s neighbors were sitting on-Louis Ross Roulet.

Officer Vivian Maxwell described Campo as disheveled, hurt and frightened. She said Campo kept asking if she was safe and if the intruder had been caught. Even after she was assured on both questions, Campo remained scared and upset, at one point telling the officer to unholster her weapon and have it ready in case the attacker broke free. When Minton was through with this witness, I stood up to conduct my first cross-examination of the trial.

“Officer Maxwell,” I asked, “did you at any time ask Ms. Campo what had happened to her?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What exactly did you ask her?”

“I asked what had happened and who did this to her. You know, who had hurt her.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She said a man had come to her door and knocked and when she opened it he punched her. She said he hit her several times and then took out a knife.”

“She said he took the knife out after he punched her?”

“That’s how she said it. She was upset and hurt at the time.”

“I understand. Did she tell you who the man was?”

“No, she said she didn’t know the man.”

“You specifically asked if she knew the man?”

“Yes. She said no.”

“So she just opened her door at ten o’clock at night to a stranger.”

“She didn’t say it that way.”

“But you said she told you she didn’t know him, right?”

“That is correct. That is how she said it. She said, ‘I don’t know who he is.’”

“And did you put this in your report?”

“Yes, I did.”

I introduced the patrol officer’s report as a defense exhibit and had Maxwell read parts of it to the jury. These parts involved Campo saying that the attack was unprovoked and at the hands of a stranger.

“‘The victim does not know the man who assaulted her and did not know why she was attacked,’” she read from her own report.

Maxwell’s partner, John Santos, testified next, telling jurors that Campo directed him to her apartment, where he found a man on the floor near the entrance. The man was semiconscious and was being held on the ground by two of Campo’s neighbors, Edward Turner and Ronald Atkins. One man was straddling the man’s chest and the other was sitting on his legs.

Santos identified the man being held on the floor as the defendant, Louis Ross Roulet. Santos described him as having blood on his clothes and his left hand. He said Roulet appeared to be suffering from a concussion or some sort of head injury and initially was not responsive to commands. Santos turned him over and handcuffed his hands behind his back. The officer then put a plastic evidence bag he carried in a compartment on his belt over Roulet’s bloody hand.

Santos testified that one of the men who had been holding Roulet handed over a folding knife that was open and had blood on its handle and blade. Santos told jurors he bagged this item as well and turned it over to Detective Martin Booker as soon as he arrived on the scene.

On cross-examination I asked Santos only two questions.

“Officer, was there blood on the defendant’s right hand?”

“No, there was no blood on his right hand or I would have bagged that one, too.”

“I see. So you have blood on the left hand only and a knife with blood on the handle. Would it then appear to you that if the defendant had held that knife, then he would have to have held it in his left hand?”

Minton objected, saying that Santos was a patrol officer and that the question was beyond the scope of his expertise. I argued that the question required only a commonsense answer, not an expert. The judge overruled the objection and the court clerk read the question back to the witness.

“It would seem that way to me,” Santos answered.

Arthur Metz was the paramedic who testified next. He told jurors about Campo’s demeanor and the extent of her injuries when he treated her less than thirty minutes after the attack. He said that it appeared to him that she had suffered at least three significant impacts to the face. He also described a small puncture wound to her neck. He described all the injuries as superficial but painful. A large blowup of the same photograph of Campo’s face I had seen on the first day I was on the case was displayed on an easel in front of the jury. I objected to this, arguing that the photo was prejudicial because it had been blown up to larger-than-life size, but I was overruled by Judge Fullbright.

Then, when it was my turn to cross-examine Metz, I used the photo I had just objected to.

“When you tell us that it appeared that she suffered at least three impacts to the face, what do you mean by ‘impact’?” I asked.

“She was struck with something. Either a fist or a blunt object.”

“So basically someone hit her three times. Could you please use this laser pointer and show the jury on the photograph where these impacts occurred.”

From my shirt pocket I unclipped a laser pointer and held it up for the judge to see. She granted me permission to carry it to Metz. I turned it on and handed it to him. He then put the red eye of the laser beam on the photo of Campo’s battered face and drew circles in the three areas where he believed she had been struck. He circled her right eye, her right cheek and an area encompassing the right side of her mouth and nose.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the laser back from him and returning to the lectern. “So if she was hit three times on the right side of her face, the impacts would have come from the left side of her attacker, correct?”

Minton objected, once more saying the question was beyond the scope of the witness’s expertise. Once more I argued common sense and once more the judge overruled the prosecutor.

“If the attacker was facing her, he would have punched her from the left, unless it was a backhand,” Metz said. “Then it could have been a right.”

He nodded and seemed pleased with himself. He obviously thought he was helping the prosecution but his effort was so disingenuous that he was actually probably helping the defense.

“You are suggesting that Ms. Campo’s attacker hit her three times with a backhand and caused this degree of injury?”

I pointed to the photo on the exhibit easel. Metz shrugged, realizing he had probably not been so helpful to the prosecution.

“Anything is possible,” he said.

“Anything is possible,” I repeated. “Well, is there any other possibility you can think of that would explain these injuries as coming from anything other than direct left-handed punches?”

Metz shrugged again. He was not an impressive witness, especially following two cops and a dispatcher who had been very precise in their testimony.

“What if Ms. Campo were to have hit her face with her own fist? Wouldn’t she have used her right -”

Minton jumped up immediately and objected.

“Your Honor, this is outrageous! To suggest that this victim did this to herself is not only an affront to this court but to all victims of violent crime everywhere. Mr. Haller has sunk to -”

“The witness said anything is possible,” I argued, trying to knock Minton off the soapbox. “I am trying to explore what -”

“Sustained,” Fullbright said, ending it. “Mr. Haller, don’t go there unless you are making more than an exploratory swing through the possibilities.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “No further questions.”

I sat down and glanced at the jurors and knew from their faces that I had made a mistake. I had turned a positive cross into a negative. The point I had made about a left-handed attacker was obscured by the point I had lost with the suggestion that the injuries to the victim’s face were self-inflicted. The three women on the panel looked particularly annoyed with me.

Still, I tried to focus on a positive aspect. It was good to know the jury’s feelings on this now, before Campo was in the witness box and I asked the same thing.

Roulet leaned toward me and whispered, “What the fuck was that?”

Without responding I turned my back to him and took a scan around the courtroom. It was almost empty. Lankford and Sobel had not returned to the courtroom and the reporters were gone as well. That left only a few other onlookers. They appeared to be a disparate collection of retirees, law students and lawyers resting their feet until their own hearings began in other courtrooms. But I was counting on one of these onlookers being a plant from the DA’s office. Ted Minton might be flying solo but my guess was that his boss would have a means of keeping tabs on him and the case. I knew I was playing as much to the plant as I was to the jury. By the trial’s end I needed to send a note of panic down to the second floor that would then echo back to Minton. I needed to push the young prosecutor toward taking a desperate measure.

The afternoon dragged on. Minton still had a lot to learn about pacing and jury management, knowledge that comes only with courtroom experience. I kept my eyes on the jury box-where the real judges sat-and saw the jurors were growing bored as witness after witness offered testimony that filled in small details in the prosecutor’s linear presentation of the events of March 6. I asked few questions on cross and tried to keep a look on my face that mirrored those I saw in the jury box.

Minton obviously wanted to save his most powerful stuff for day two. He would have the lead investigator, Detective Martin Booker, to bring all the details together, and then the victim, Regina Campo, to bring it all home to the jury. It was a tried-and-true formula-ending with muscle and emotion-and it worked ninety percent of the time, but it was making the first day move like a glacier.

Things finally started to pop with the last witness of the day. Minton brought in Charles Talbot, the man who had picked up Regina Campo at Morgan’s and gone with her to her apartment on the night of the sixth. What Talbot had to offer to the prosecution’s case was negligible. He was basically hauled in to testify that Campo had been in good health and uninjured when he left her. That was it. But what caused his arrival to rescue the trial from the pit of boredom was that Talbot was an honest-to-God alternate lifestyle man and jurors always loved visiting the other side of the tracks.

Talbot was fifty-five years old with dyed blond hair that wasn’t fooling anyone. He had blurred Navy tattoos on both forearms. He was twenty years divorced and owned a twenty-four-hour convenience store called Kwik Kwik. The business gave him a comfortable living and lifestyle with an apartment in the Warner Center, a late-model Corvette and a nightlife that included a wide sampling of the city’s professional sex providers.

Minton established all of this in the early stages of his direct examination. You could almost feel the air go still in the courtroom as the jurors plugged into Talbot. The prosecutor then brought him quickly to the night of March 6, and Talbot described hooking up with Reggie Campo at Morgan’s on Ventura Boulevard.

“Did you know Ms. Campo before you met her in the bar that night?”

“No, I did not.”

“How did it come about that you met her there?”

“I just called her up and said I wanted to get together with her and she suggested we meet at Morgan’s. I knew the place, so I said sure.”

“And how did you call her up?”

“With the telephone.”

Several jurors laughed.

“I’m sorry. I understand that you used a telephone to call her. I meant how did you know how to contact her?”

“I saw her ad on the website and I liked what I saw and so I went ahead and called her up and we made a date. It’s as simple as that. Her number is on her website ad.”

“And you met at Morgan’s.”

“Yes, that’s where she meets her dates, she told me. So I went there and we had a couple drinks and we talked and we liked each other and that was that. I followed her back to her place.”

“When you went to her apartment did you engage in sexual relations?”

“Sure did. That’s what I was there for.”

“And you paid her?”

“Four hundred bucks. It was worth it.”

I saw a male juror’s face turning red and I knew I had pegged him perfectly during selection the week before. I had wanted him because he had brought a Bible with him to read while other prospective jurors were being questioned. Minton had missed it, focusing only on the candidates as they were being questioned. But I had seen the Bible and asked few questions of the man when it was his turn. Minton accepted him on the jury and so did I. I figured he would be easy to turn against the victim because of her occupation. His reddening face confirmed it.

“What time did you leave her apartment?” Minton asked.

“About five minutes before ten,” Talbot answered.

“Did she tell you she was expecting another date at the apartment?”

“No, she didn’t say anything about that. In fact, she was sort of acting like she was done for the night.”

I stood up and objected.

“I don’t think Mr. Talbot is qualified here to interpret what Ms. Campo was thinking or planning by her actions.”

“Sustained,” the judge said before Minton could offer an argument.

The prosecutor moved right along.

“Mr. Talbot, could you please describe the physical state Ms. Campo was in when you left her shortly before ten o’clock on the night of March sixth?”

“Completely satisfied.”

There was a loud blast of laughter in the courtroom and Talbot beamed proudly. I checked the Bible man and it looked like his jaw was tightly clenched.

“Mr. Talbot,” Minton said. “I mean her physical state. Was she hurt or bleeding when you left her?”

“No, she was fine. She was okay. When I left her she was fit as a fiddle and I know because I had just played her.”

He smiled, proud of his use of language. This time there was no laughter and the judge had finally had enough of his use of the double entendre. She admonished him to keep his more off-color remarks to himself.

“Sorry, Judge,” he said.

“Mr. Talbot,” Minton said. “Ms. Campo was not injured in any way when you left her?”

“Nope. No way.”

“She wasn’t bleeding?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t strike her or physically abuse her in any way?”

“No again. What we did was consensual and pleasurable. No pain.”

“Thank you, Mr. Talbot.”

I looked at my notes for a few moments before standing up. I wanted a break of time to clearly mark the line between direct and cross-examination.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge prompted. “Do you wish to cross-examine the witness?”

I stood up and moved to the lectern.

“Yes, Your Honor, I do.”

I put my pad down and looked directly at Talbot. He was smiling pleasantly at me but I knew he wouldn’t like me for very long.

“Mr. Talbot, are you right- or left-handed?”

“I’m left-handed.”

“Left-handed,” I echoed. “And isn’t it true that on the night of the sixth, before leaving Regina Campo’s apartment, she asked you to strike her with your fist repeatedly in the face?”

Minton stood up.

“Your Honor, there is no basis for this sort of questioning. Mr. Haller is simply trying to muddy the waters by taking outrageous statements and turning them into questions.”

The judge looked at me and waited for a response.

“Judge, it is part of the defense theory as outlined in my opening statement.”

“I am going to allow it. Just be quick about it, Mr. Haller.”

The question was read to Talbot and he smirked and shook his head.

“That is not true. I’ve never hurt a woman in my life.”

“You struck her with your fist three times, didn’t you, Mr. Talbot?”

“No, I did not. That is a lie.”

“You said you have never hurt a woman in your life.”

“That’s right. Never.”

“Do you know a prostitute named Shaquilla Barton?”

Talbot had to think before answering.

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“On the website where she advertises her services she uses the name Shaquilla Shackles. Does that ring a bell now, Mr. Talbot?”

“Okay, yeah, I think so.”

“Have you ever engaged in acts of prostitution with her?”

“One time, yes.”

“When was that?”

“Would’ve been at least a year ago. Maybe longer.”

“And did you hurt her on that occasion?”

“No.”

“And if she were to come to this courtroom and say that you did hurt her by punching her with your left hand, would she be lying?”

“She damn sure would be. I tried her out and didn’t like that rough stuff. I’m strictly a missionary man. I didn’t touch her.”

“You didn’t touch her?”

“I mean I didn’t punch her or hurt her in any way.”

“Thank you, Mr. Talbot.”

I sat down. Minton did not bother with a redirect. Talbot was excused and Minton told the judge that he had only two witnesses remaining to present in the case but that their testimony would be lengthy. Judge Fullbright checked the time and recessed court for the day.

Two witnesses left. I knew that had to be Detective Booker and Reggie Campo. It looked like Minton was going to go without the testimony of the jailhouse snitch he had stashed in the PTI program at County-USC. Dwayne Corliss’s name had never appeared on any witness list or any other discovery document associated with the prosecution of the case. I thought maybe Minton had found out what Raul Levin had found out about Corliss before Raul was murdered. Either way, it seemed apparent that Corliss had been dropped by the prosecution. And that was what I needed to change.

As I gathered my papers and documents in my briefcase, I also gathered the resolve to talk to Roulet. I glanced over at him. He was sitting there waiting to be dismissed by me.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“I think you did very well. More than a few moments of reasonable doubt.”

I snapped the latches on the briefcase closed.

“Today I was just planting seeds. Tomorrow they’ll sprout and on Wednesday they’ll bloom. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

I stood up and lifted the briefcase off the table. It was heavy with all the case documents and my computer.

“See you tomorrow.”

I walked out through the gate. Cecil Dobbs and Mary Windsor were waiting for Roulet in the hallway near the courtroom door. As I came out they turned to speak to me but I walked on by.

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Dobbs called to my back.

I turned around.

“We’re stuck out here,” he said as he and Windsor walked to me. “How is it going in there?”

I shrugged.

“Right now it’s the prosecution’s case,” I answered. “All I’m doing is bobbing and weaving, trying to protect. I think tomorrow will be our round. And Wednesday we go for the knockout. I’ve got to go prepare.”

As I headed to the elevator, I saw that a number of the jurors from the case had beaten me to it and were waiting to go down. The scorekeeper was among them. I went into the restroom next to the bank of elevators so I didn’t have to ride down with them. I put my briefcase on the counter between the sinks and washed my face and hands. As I stared at myself in the mirror I looked for signs of stress from the case and everything associated with it. I looked reasonably sane and calm for a defense pro who was playing both his client and the prosecution at the same time.

The cold water felt good and I felt refreshed as I came out of the restroom, hoping the jurors had cleared out.

The jurors were gone. But standing in the hallway by the elevator were Lankford and Sobel. Lankford was holding a folded sheaf of documents in one hand.

“There you are,” he said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

THIRTY

The document Lankford handed me was a search warrant granting the police the authority to search my home, office and car for a.22 caliber Colt Woodsman Sport Model pistol with the serial number 656300081-52. The authorization said the pistol was believed to have been the murder weapon in the April 12 homicide of Raul A. Levin. Lankford had handed the warrant to me with a proud smirk on his face. I did my best to act like it was business as usual, the kind of thing I handled every other day and twice on Fridays. But the truth was, my knees almost buckled.

“How’d you get this?” I said.

It was a nonsensical response to a nonsensical moment.

“Signed, sealed and delivered,” Lankford said. “So where do you want to start? You have your car here, right? That Lincoln you’re chauffeured around in like a high-class hooker.”

I checked the judge’s signature on the last page and saw it was a Glendale muni-court judge I had never heard of. They had gone to a local who probably knew he’d need the police endorsement come election time. I started to recover from the shock. Maybe the search was a front.

“This is bullshit,” I said. “You don’t have the PC for this. I could have this thing quashed in ten minutes.”

“It looked pretty good to Judge Fullbright,” Lankford said.

“Fullbright? What does she have to do with this?”

“Well, we knew you were in trial, so we figured we ought to ask her if it was okay to drop the warrant on you. Don’t want to get a lady like that mad, you know. She said after court was over was fine by her-and she didn’t say shit about the PC or anything else.”

They must have gone to Fullbright on the lunch break, right after I had seen them in the courtroom. My guess was, it had been Sobel’s idea to check with the judge first. A guy like Lankford would have enjoyed pulling me right out of court and disrupting the trial.

I had to think quickly. I looked at Sobel, the more sympathetic of the two.

“I’m in the middle of a three-day trial,” I said. “Any way we can put this on hold until Thursday?”

“No fucking way,” Lankford answered before his partner could. “We’re not letting you out of our sight until we execute the search. We’re not going to give you the time to dump the gun. Now where’s your car, Lincoln lawyer?”

I checked the authorization of the warrant. It had to be very specific and I was in luck. It called for the search of a Lincoln with the California license plate NT GLTY. I realized that someone must have written the plate down on the day I was called to Raul Levin’s house from the Dodgers game. Because that was the old Lincoln -the one I was driving that day.

“It’s at home. Since I’m in trial I don’t use the driver. I got a ride in with my client this morning and I was just going to ride back with him. He’s probably waiting down there.”

I lied. The Lincoln I had been driving was in the courthouse parking garage. But I couldn’t let the cops search it because there was a gun in a compartment in the backseat armrest. It wasn’t the gun they were looking for but it was a replacement. After Raul Levin was murdered and I’d found my pistol box empty, I asked Earl Briggs to get me a gun for protection. I knew that with Earl there would be no ten-day waiting period. But I didn’t know the gun’s history or registration and I didn’t want to find out through the Glendale Police Department.

But I was in luck because the Lincoln with the gun inside wasn’t the one described in the warrant. That one was in my garage at home, waiting on the buyer from the limo service to come by and take a look at. And that would be the Lincoln that would be searched.

Lankford grabbed the warrant out of my hand and shoved it into an inside coat pocket.

“Don’t worry about your ride,” Lankford said. “We’re your ride. Let’s go.”

On the way down and out of the courthouse, we didn’t run into Roulet or his entourage. And soon I was riding in the back of a Grand Marquis, thinking that I had made the right choice when I had gone with the Lincoln. There was more room in the Lincoln and the ride was smoother.

Lankford did the driving and I sat behind him. The windows were up and I could hear him chewing gum.

“Let me see the warrant again,” I said.

Lankford made no move.

“I’m not letting you inside my house until I’ve had a chance to completely study the warrant. I could do it on the way and save you some time. Or…”

Lankford reached inside his jacket and pulled out the warrant. He handed it over his shoulder to me. I knew why he was hesitant. Cops usually had to lay out their whole investigation in the warrant application in order to convince a judge of probable cause. They didn’t like the target reading it, because it gave away the store.

I glanced out the window as we were passing the car lots on Van Nuys Boulevard. I saw a new model Town Car on a pedestal in front of the Lincoln dealership. I looked back down at the warrant, opened it to the summary section and read.

Lankford and Sobel had started out doing some good work. I had to give them that. One of them had taken a shot-I was guessing Sobel-and put my name into the state’s Automated Firearm System and hit the lotto. The AFS computer said I was the registered owner of a pistol of the same make and model as the murder weapon.

It was a smooth move but it still wasn’t enough to make probable cause. Colt made the Woodsman for more than sixty years. That meant there were probably a million of them out there and a million suspects who owned them.

They had the smoke. They then rubbed other sticks together to make the required fire. The application summary stated that I had hidden from the investigators the fact that I owned the gun in question. It said I had also fabricated an alibi when initially interviewed about Levin’s death, then attempted to throw detectives off the track by giving them a phony lead on the drug dealer Hector Arrande Moya.

Though motivation was not necessarily a subject needed to obtain a search warrant, the PC summary alluded to it anyway, stating that the victim-Raul Levin-had been extorting investigative assignments from me and that I had refused to pay him upon completion of those assignments.

The outrage of such an assertion aside, the alibi fabrication was the key point of probable cause. The statement said that I had told the detectives I was home at the time of the murder, but a message on my home phone was left just before the suspected time of death and this indicated that I was not home, thereby collapsing my alibi and proving me a liar at the same time.

I slowly read the PC statement twice more but my anger did not subside. I tossed the warrant onto the seat next to me.

“In some ways it’s really too bad I am not the killer,” I said.

“Yeah, why is that?” Lankford said.

“Because this warrant is a piece of shit and you both know it. It won’t stand up to challenge. I told you that message came in when I was already on the phone and that can be checked and proven, only you were too lazy or you didn’t want to check it because it would have made it a little difficult to get your warrant. Even with your pocket judge in Glendale. You lied by omission and commission. It’s a bad-faith warrant.”

Because I was sitting behind Lankford I had a better angle on Sobel. I watched her for signs of doubt as I spoke.

“And the suggestion that Raul was extorting business from me and that I wouldn’t pay is a complete joke. Extorted me with what? And what didn’t I pay him for? I paid him every time I got a bill. Man, I tell you, if this is how you work all your cases, I gotta open up an office in Glendale. I’m going to shove this warrant right up your police chief’s ass.”

“You lied about the gun,” Lankford said. “And you owed Levin money. It’s right there in his accounts book. Four grand.”

“I didn’t lie about anything. You never asked if I owned a gun.”

“Lied by omission. Right back at ya.”

“Bullshit.”

“Four grand.”

“Oh yeah, the four grand-I killed him because I didn’t want to pay him four grand,” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster. “You got me there, Detective. Motivation. But I guess it never occurred to you to see if he had even billed me for the four grand yet, or to see if I hadn’t just paid an invoice from him for six thousand dollars a week before he was murdered.”

Lankford was undaunted. But I saw the doubt start to creep into Sobel’s face.

“Doesn’t matter how much or when you paid him,” Lankford said. “A blackmailer is never satisfied. You never stop paying until you reach the point of no return. That’s what this is about. The point of no return.”

I shook my head.

“And what exactly was it that he had on me that made me give him jobs and pay him until I reached the point of no return?”

Lankford and Sobel exchanged a look and Lankford nodded. Sobel reached down to a briefcase on the floor and took out a file. She handed it over the seat to me.

“Take a look,” Lankford said. “You missed it when you were ransacking his place. He’d hidden it in a dresser drawer.”

I opened the file and saw that it contained several 8 ¥ 10 color photos. They were taken from afar and I was in each one of them. The photographer had trailed my Lincoln over several days and several miles. Each image a frozen moment in time, the photos showed me with various individuals whom I easily recognized as clients. They were prostitutes, street dealers and Road Saints. The photos could be interpreted as suspicious because they showed one split second of time. A male prostitute in mini-shorts alighting from the backseat of the Lincoln. Teddy Vogel handing me a thick roll of cash through the back window. I closed the file and tossed it back over the seat.

“You’re kidding me, right? You’re saying Raul came to me with that? He extorted me with that? Those are my clients. Is this a joke or am I just missing something?”

“The California bar might not think it’s a joke,” Lankford said. “We hear you’re on thin ice with the bar. Levin knew it. He worked it.”

I shook my head.

“Incredible,” I said.

I knew I had to stop talking. I was doing everything wrong with these people. I knew I should just shut up and ride it out. But I felt an almost overpowering need to convince them. I began to understand why so many cases were made in the interview rooms of police stations. People just can’t shut up.

I tried to place the photographs that were in the file. Vogel giving me the roll of cash was in the parking lot outside the Saints’ strip club on Sepulveda. That happened after Harold Casey’s trial and Vogel was paying me for filing the appeal. The prostitute was named Terry Jones and I handled a soliciting charge for him the first week of April. I’d had to find him on the Santa Monica Boulevard stroll the night before a hearing to make sure he was going to show up.

It became clear that the photos had all been taken between the morning I had caught the Roulet case and the day Raul Levin was murdered. They were then planted at the crime scene by the killer-all part of Roulet’s plan to set me up so that he could control me. The police would have everything they needed to put the Levin murder on me-except the murder weapon. As long as Roulet had the gun, he had me.

I had to admire the plan and the ingenuity at the same time that it made me feel the dread of desperation. I tried to put the window down but the button wouldn’t work. I asked Sobel to open a window and she did. Fresh air started blowing into the car.

After a while Lankford looked at me in the rearview and tried to jump-start the conversation.

“We ran the history on that Woodsman,” he said. “You know who owned it once, don’t you?”

“Mickey Cohen,” I answered matter-of-factly, staring out the window at the steep hillsides of Laurel Canyon.

“How’d you end up with Mickey Cohen’s gun?”

I answered without turning from the window.

“My father was a lawyer. Mickey Cohen was his client.”

Lankford whistled. Cohen was one of the most famous gangsters to ever call Los Angeles home. He was from back in the day when the gangsters competed with movie stars for the gossip headlines.

“And what? He just gave your old man a gun?”

“Cohen was charged in a shooting and my father defended him. He claimed self-defense. There was a trial and my father got a not-guilty verdict. When the weapon was returned Mickey gave it to my father. Sort of a keepsake, you could say.”

“Your old man ever wonder how many people the Mick whacked with it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t really know my father.”

“What about Cohen? You ever meet him?”

“My father represented him before I was even born. The gun came to me in his will. I don’t know why he picked me to have it. I was only five years old when he died.”

“And you grew up to be a lawyer like dear old dad, and being a good lawyer you registered it.”

“I thought if it was ever stolen or something I would want to be able to get it back. Turn here on Fareholm.”

Lankford did as I instructed and we started climbing up the hill to my home. I then gave them the bad news.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “You guys can search my house and my office and my car for as long as you want, but I have to tell you, you are wasting your time. Not only am I the wrong guy for this, but you aren’t going to find that gun.”

I saw Lankford’s head jog up and he was looking at me in the rearview again.

“And why is that, Counselor? You already dumped it?”

“Because the gun was stolen out of my house and I don’t know where it is.”

Lankford started laughing. I saw the joy in his eyes.

“Uh-huh, stolen. How convenient. When did this happen?”

“Hard to tell. I hadn’t checked on the gun in years.”

“You make a police report on it or file an insurance claim?”

“No.”

“So somebody comes in and steals your Mickey Cohen gun and you don’t report it. Even after you just told us you registered it in case this very thing happened. You being a lawyer and all, doesn’t that sound a little screwy to you?”

“It does, except I knew who stole it. It was a client. He told me he took it and if I were to report it, I would be violating a client trust because my police report would lead to his arrest. Kind of a catch-twenty-two, Detective.”

Sobel turned and looked back at me. I think maybe she thought I was making it up on the spot, which I was.

“That sounds like legal jargon and bullshit, Haller,” Lankford said.

“But it’s the truth. We’re here. Just park in front of the garage.”

Lankford pulled the car into the space in front of my garage and killed the engine. He turned to look back at me before getting out.

“Which client stole the gun?”

“I told you, I can’t tell you.”

“Well, Roulet’s your only client right now, isn’t he?”

“I have a lot of clients. But I told you, I can’t tell you.”

“Think maybe we should run the charts from his ankle bracelet and see if he’s been to your place lately?”

“Do whatever you want. He actually has been here. We had a meeting here once. In my office.”

“Maybe that’s when he took it.”

“I’m not telling you he took it, Detective.”

“Yeah, well, that bracelet gives Roulet a pass on the Levin thing, anyway. We checked the GPS. So I guess that leaves you, Counselor.”

“And that leaves you wasting your time.”

I suddenly realized something about Roulet’s ankle bracelet but tried not to show it. Maybe a line on the trapdoor to his Houdini act. It was something I would need to check into later.

“Are we just going to sit here?”

Lankford turned and got out. He then opened my door because the inside handle had been disabled for transporting suspects and custodies. I looked at the two detectives.

“You want me to show you the gun box? Maybe when you see it is empty, you can just leave and save us all the time.”

“Not quite, Counselor,” Lankford said. “We’re going through this whole place. I’ll take the car and Detective Sobel will start in the house.”

I shook my head.

“Not quite, Detective. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t trust you. Your warrant is bent, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re bent. You stay together so I can watch you both or we wait until I can get a second observer up here. My case manager could be here in ten minutes. I could bring her up here to watch and you could also ask her about calling me on the morning Raul Levin got killed.”

Lankford’s face grew dark with insult and anger that he looked like he was having trouble controlling. I decided to push it. I took out my cell phone and opened it.

“I’m going to call your judge right now and see if he -”

“Fine,” Lankford said. “We’ll start with the car. Together. We’ll work our way inside the house.”

I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket.

“Fine.”

I walked over to a keypad on the wall outside the garage. I tapped in the combination and the garage door started to rise, revealing the blue-black Lincoln awaiting inspection. Its license plate read NT GLTY. Lankford looked at it and shook his head.

“Yeah, right.”

He stepped into the garage, his face still tight with anger. I decided to ease things a little bit.

“Hey, Detective,” I said. “What’s the difference between a catfish and a defense attorney?”

He didn’t respond. He stared angrily at the license plate on my Lincoln.

“One’s a bottom-feeding shit sucker,” I said. “And the other one’s a fish.”

For a moment his face remained frozen. Then a smile creased it and he broke into a long and hard laugh. Sobel stepped into the garage, having not heard the joke.

“What?” she said.

“I’ll tell you later,” Lankford said.

THIRTY-ONE

It took them a half hour to search the Lincoln and then move into the house, where they started with the office. I watched the whole time and only spoke when offering explanation about something that gave them pause in their search. They didn’t talk much to each other and it was becoming increasingly clear that there was a rift between the two partners over the direction Lankford had taken the investigation.

At one point Lankford got a call on his cell phone and he went out the front door onto the porch to talk privately. I had the shades up and if I stood in the hallway I could look one way and see him out there and the other way and see Sobel in my office.

“You’re not too happy about this, are you?” I said to Sobel when I was sure her partner couldn’t hear.

“It doesn’t matter how I am. We’re following the case and that’s it.”

“Is your partner always like that, or only with lawyers?”

“He spent fifty thousand dollars on a lawyer last year, trying to get custody of his kids. He didn’t. Before that we lost a big case-a murder-on a legal technicality.”

I nodded.

“And he blamed the lawyer. But who broke the rules?”

She didn’t respond and that as much as confirmed it had been Lankford who had made the technical misstep.

“I get the picture,” I said.

I checked on Lankford on the porch again. He was gesturing impatiently like he was trying to explain something to a moron. Must have been his custody lawyer. I decided to change the subject with Sobel.

“Do you think you are being manipulated at all on this case?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The photos stashed in the bureau, the bullet casing in the floor vent. Pretty convenient, don’t you think?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking questions your partner doesn’t seem interested in.”

I checked on Lankford. He was tapping in numbers on his cell, making a new call. I turned and stepped into the open doorway of the office. Sobel was looking behind the files in a drawer. Finding no gun, she closed the drawer and stepped over to the desk. I spoke in a low voice.

“What about Raul’s message to me?” I said. “About finding Jesus Menendez’s ticket out, what do you think he meant?”

“We haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Too bad. I think it’s important.”

“Everything’s important until it isn’t.”

I nodded, not sure what she meant by that.

“You know, the case I’m trying is pretty interesting. You ought to come back by and watch. You might learn something.”

She looked from the desk to me. Our eyes held for a moment. Then she squinted with suspicion, like she was trying to judge whether a supposed murder suspect was actually coming on to her.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you might have trouble getting to court if you’re in lockup.”

“Hey, no gun, no case. That’s why you’re here, right?”

She didn’t answer.

“Besides, this is your partner’s thing. You’re not riding with him on this. I can tell.”

“Typical lawyer. You think you know all the angles.”

“No, not me. I’m finding out I don’t know any of them.”

She changed the subject.

“Is this your daughter?”

She pointed to the framed photograph on the desk.

“Yeah. Hayley.”

“Nice alliteration. Hayley Haller. Named after the comet?”

“Sort of. Spelled differently. My ex-wife came up with it.”

Lankford came in then, talking to Sobel loudly about the call he had gotten. It had been from a supervisor telling them that they were back in play and would handle the next Glendale homicide whether the Levin case was still active or not. He didn’t say anything about the call he had made.

Sobel told him she had finished searching the office. No gun.

“I’m telling you, it’s not here,” I said. “You are wasting your time. And mine. I have court tomorrow and need to prepare for witnesses.”

“Let’s do the bedroom next,” Lankford said, ignoring my protest.

I backed up into the hallway to give them space to come out of one room and go into the next. They walked down the sides of the bed to where twin night tables waited. Lankford opened the top drawer of his table and lifted out a CD.

“Wreckrium for Lil’ Demon,” he read. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

I didn’t respond. Sobel quickly opened the two drawers of her table and found them empty except for a strip of condoms. I looked the other way.

“I’ll take the closet,” Lankford said after he had finished with his night table-leaving the drawers open in typical police search fashion. He walked into the closet and soon spoke from inside it.

“Here we go.”

He stepped back out of the closet holding the wooden gun box.

“Bingo,” I said. “You found an empty gun box. You must be a detective.”

Lankford shook the box in his hands before putting it down on the bed. Either he was trying to play with me or the box had a solid heft to it. I felt a little charge go down the back of my neck as I realized that Roulet could have just as easily snuck back into my house to return the gun. It would have been the perfect hiding place for it. The last place I might think to check again once I had determined that the gun was gone. I remembered the odd smile on Roulet’s face when I had told him I wanted my gun back. Was he smiling because I already had the gun back?

Lankford flipped the box’s latch and lifted the top. He pulled back the oilcloth covering. The cork cutout which once held Mickey Cohen’s gun was still empty. I breathed out so heavily it almost came out as a sigh.

“What did I tell you?” I said quickly, trying to cover up.

“Yeah, what did you tell us,” Lankford said. “Heidi, you got a bag? We’re going to take the box.”

I looked at Sobel. She didn’t look like a Heidi to me. I wondered if it was some sort of a squad room nickname. Or maybe it was the reason she didn’t put her first name on her business card. It didn’t sound homicide tough.

“In the car,” she said.

“Go get it,” Lankford said.

“You are going to take an empty gun box?” I asked. “What good does it do you?”

“All part of the chain of evidence, Counselor. You should know that. Besides, it will come in handy, since I have a feeling we’ll never find the gun.”

I shook my head.

“Maybe handy in your dreams. The box is evidence of nothing.”

“It’s evidence that you had Mickey Cohen’s gun. Says it right on this little brass plaque your daddy or somebody had made.”

“So fucking what?”

“Well, I just made a call while I was out on your front porch, Haller. See, we had somebody checking on Mickey Cohen’s self-defense case. Turns out that over there in LAPD’s evidence archive they still have all the ballistic evidence from that case. That’s a lucky break for us, the case being, what, fifty years old?”

I understood immediately. They would take the bullet slugs and casings from the Cohen case and compare them with the same evidence recovered in the Levin case. They would match the Levin murder to Mickey Cohen’s gun which they would then tie to me with the gun box and the state’s AFS computer. I doubted Roulet could have realized how the police would be able to make a case without even having the gun when he thought out his scheme to control me.

I stood there silently. Sobel left the room without a glance at me and Lankford looked up from the box at me with a killer smile.

“What’s the matter, Counselor?” he asked. “Evidence got your tongue?”

I finally was able to speak.

“How long will ballistics take?” I managed to ask.

“Hey, for you, we’re going to put a rush on it. So get out there and enjoy yourself while you can. But don’t leave town.”

He laughed, almost giddy with himself.

“Man, I thought they only said that in movies. But there, I just said it! I wish my partner had been here.”

Sobel came back in with a large brown bag and a roll of red evidence tape. I watched her put the gun box into the bag and then seal it with the tape. I wondered how much time I had and if the wheels had just come off of everything I had put into motion. I started to feel as empty as the wooden box Sobel had just sealed inside the brown paper bag.

THIRTY-TWO

Fernando Valenzuela lived out in Valencia. From my home it was easily an hour’s drive north in the last remnants of rush-hour traffic. Valenzuela had moved out of Van Nuys a few years earlier because his three daughters were nearing high school age and he feared for their safety and education. He moved into a neighborhood filled with people who had also fled from the city and his commute went from five minutes to forty-five. But he was happy. His house was nicer and his children safer. He lived in a Spanish-style house with a red tile roof in a planned community full of Spanish-style houses with red tile roofs. It was more than a bail bondsman could ever dream of having, but it came with a stiff monthly price tag.

It was almost nine by the time I got there. I pulled up to the garage, which had been left open. One space was taken by a minivan and the other by a pickup. On the floor between the pickup and a fully equipped tool bench was a large cardboard box that said SONY on it. It was long and thin. I looked closer and saw it was a box for a fifty-inch plasma TV. I got out and went to the front door and knocked. Valenzuela answered after a long wait.

“Mick, what are you doing up here?”

“Do you know your garage door is open?”

“Holy shit! I just had a plasma delivered.”

He pushed by me and ran across the yard to look into the garage. I closed his front door and followed him to the garage. When I got there he was standing next to his TV, smiling.

“Oh, man, you know that would’ve never happened in Van Nuys,” he said. “That sucker woulda been long gone. Come on, we’ll go in through here.”

He headed toward a door that would take us from the garage into the house. He hit a switch that made the garage door start to roll down.

“Hey, Val, wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s just talk out here. It’s more private.”

“But Maria probably wants to say hello.”

“Maybe next time.”

He came back over to me, concern in his eyes.

“What’s up, Boss?”

“What’s up is I spent some time today with the cops working on Raul’s murder. They said they cleared Roulet on it because of the ankle bracelet.”

Valenzuela nodded vigorously.

“Yeah, yeah, they came to see me a few days after it happened. I showed them the system and how it works and I pulled up Roulet’s track for that day. They saw he was at work. And I also showed them the other bracelet I got and explained how it couldn’t be tampered with. It’s got a mass detector. Bottom line is you can’t take it off. It would know and then I would know.”

I leaned back against the pickup and folded my arms.

“So did those two cops ask where you were on that Saturday?”

It hit Valenzuela like a punch.

“What did you say, Mick?”

My eyes lowered to the plasma TV box and then back up to his.

“Somehow, some way, he killed Raul, Val. Now my ass is on the line and I want to know how he did it.”

“Mick, listen to me, he’s clear. I’m telling you, that bracelet didn’t come off his ankle. The machine doesn’t lie.”

“Yeah, I know, the machine doesn’t lie…”

After a moment he got it.

“What are you saying, Mick?”

He stepped in front of me, his body posture stiffening aggressively. I stopped leaning on the truck and dropped my hands to my sides.

“I’m asking, Val. Where were you on that Tuesday morning?”

“You son of a bitch, how could you ask me that?”

He had moved into a fight stance. I was momentarily taken off guard as I thought about him calling me what I had called Roulet earlier in the day.

Valenzuela suddenly lunged at me and shoved me hard against his truck. I shoved him back harder and he went backwards into the TV box. It tipped over and hit the floor with a loud, heavy whump and then he came down on it in a seated position. There was a sharp snap sound from inside the box.

“Oh, fuck!” he cried. “Oh, fuck! You broke the screen!”

“You pushed me, Val. I pushed back.”

“Oh, fuck!”

He scrambled to the side of the box and tried to lift it back up but it was too heavy and unwieldy. I walked over to the other side and helped him right it. As the box came upright we heard small bits of material inside it slide down. It sounded like glass.

“Motherfuck!” Valenzuela yelled.

The door leading into the house opened and his wife, Maria, looked out.

“Hi, Mickey. Val, what is all the noise?”

“Just go inside,” her husband ordered.

“Well, what is -”

“Shut the fuck up and go inside!”

She paused for a moment, staring at us, then closed the door. I heard her lock it. It looked like Valenzuela was sleeping with the broken TV tonight. I looked back at him. His mouth was spread in shock.

“That was eight thousand dollars,” he whispered.

“They make TVs that cost eight thousand dollars?”

I was shocked. What was the world coming to?

“That was with a discount.”

“Val, where’d you get the money for an eight-thousand-dollar TV?”

He looked at me and the fire came back.

“Where the fuck do you think? Business, man. Thanks to Roulet I’m having a hell of a year. But goddamn, Mick, I didn’t cut him loose from the bracelet so he could go out and kill Raul. I knew Raul just as long as you did. I did not do that. I did not put the bracelet on and wear it while he went to kill Raul. And I did not go and kill Raul for him for a fucking TV. If you can’t believe that, then just get the hell out of here and out of my life!”

He said it all with the desperate intensity of a wounded animal. A flash thought of Jesus Menendez came to my mind. I had failed to see the innocence in his pleas. I didn’t want that to ever happen again.

“Okay, Val,” I said.

I walked over to the house door and pushed the button that raised the garage door. When I turned back I saw he had taken a box cutter from the tool bench and was cutting the tape on the top of the TV box. It looked like he was trying to confirm what we already knew about the plasma. I walked past him and out of the garage.

“I’ll split it with you, Val,” I said. “I’ll have Lorna send you a check in the morning.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll tell them it was delivered this way.”

I got to my car door and looked back at him.

“Then give me a call when they arrest you for fraud. After you bail yourself out.”

I got in the Lincoln and backed out of the driveway. When I glanced back into the garage, I saw Valenzuela had stopped cutting open the box and was just standing there looking at me.

Traffic going back into the city was light and I made good time. I was just coming in through the front door when the house phone started to ring. I grabbed it in the kitchen, thinking maybe it was Valenzuela calling to tell me he was taking his business to another defense pro. At the moment I didn’t care.

Instead, it was Maggie McPherson.

“Everything all right?” I asked. She usually didn’t call so late.

“Fine.”

“Where’s Hayley?”

“Asleep. I didn’t want to call until she went down.”

“What’s up?”

“There was a strange rumor about you floating around the office today.”

“You mean the one about me being Raul Levin’s murderer?”

“Haller, is this serious?”

The kitchen was too small for a table and chairs. I couldn’t go far with the phone cord tether so I hoisted myself up onto the counter. Through the window over the sink I could see the lights of downtown twinkling in the distance and a glow on the horizon that I knew came from Dodger Stadium.

“I would say, yes, the situation is serious. I am being set up to take the fall for Raul’s murder.”

“Oh my God, Michael, how is this possible?”

“A lot of different ingredients-evil client, cop with a grudge, stupid lawyer, add sugar and spice and everything nice.”

“Is it Roulet? Is he the one?”

“I can’t talk about my clients with you, Mags.”

“Well, what are you planning to do?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it covered. I’ll be okay.”

“What about Hayley?”

I knew what she was saying. She was warning me to keep it away from Hayley. Don’t let her go to school and hear kids talking about her father the murder suspect with a face and name splashed across the news.

“Hayley will be fine. She’ll never know. Nobody will ever know if I play this thing right.”

She didn’t say anything and there was nothing else I could do to reassure her. I changed the subject. I tried to sound confident, even cheerful.

“How did your boy Minton look after court today?”

She didn’t answer at first, probably reluctant to change the subject.

“I don’t know. He looked fine. But Smithson sent an observer up because it’s his first solo.”

I nodded. I was counting on Smithson, who ran the DA’s Van Nuys branch, having sent somebody to keep a watch on Minton.

“Any feedback?”

“No, not yet. Nothing that I heard. Look, Haller, I am really worried about this. The rumor was that you were served a search warrant in the courthouse. Is that true?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry about it. I’m telling you, I have things under control. It will all come out okay. I promise.”

I knew I had not quelled her fears. She was thinking about our daughter and the possible scandal. She was probably also thinking a little bit about herself and what having an ex-husband disbarred or accused of murder would do to her chances of advancement.

“Besides, if it all goes to shit, you’re still going to be my first customer, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Lincoln Lawyer Limousine Service. You’re in, right?”

“Haller, it doesn’t sound like this is a time to be making jokes.”

“It’s no joke, Maggie. I’ve been thinking about quitting. Even before all of this bullshit came up. It’s like I told you that night, I can’t do this anymore.”

There was a long silence before she responded.

“Whatever you want to do is going to be fine by me and Hayley.”

I nodded.

“You don’t know how much I appreciate that.”

She sighed into the phone.

“I don’t know how you do it, Haller.”

“Do what?”

“You’re a sleazy defense lawyer with two ex-wives and an eight-year-old daughter. And we all still love you.”

Now I was silent. Despite everything I smiled.

“Thank you, Maggie McFierce,” I finally said. “Good night.”

And I hung up the phone.

THIRTY-THREE

The second day of trial began with a forthwith to the judge’s chambers for Minton and me. Judge Fullbright wanted only to speak to me but the rules of trial made it improper for her to meet privately with me about any matter and exclude the prosecution. Her chambers were spacious, with a desk and separate seating area surrounded by three walls of shelves containing law books. She told us to sit in the seats in front of her desk.

“Mr. Minton,” she began, “I can’t tell you not to listen but I’m going to have a conversation with Mr. Haller that I don’t expect you to join or interrupt. It doesn’t concern you or, as far as I know, the Roulet case.”

Minton, taken by surprise, didn’t quite know how to react other than to drop his jaw a couple inches and let light into his mouth. The judge turned in her desk chair toward me and clasped her hands together on the desk.

“Mr. Haller, is there anything you need to bring up with me? Keeping in mind that you are sitting next to a prosecutor.”

“No, Judge, everything’s fine. Sorry if you were bothered yesterday.”

I did my best to put a rueful smile on my face, as if to show the search warrant had been nothing more than an embarrassing inconvenience.

“It is hardly a bother, Mr. Haller. We’ve invested a lot of time on this case. The jury, the prosecution, all of us. I am hoping that it is not going to be for naught. I don’t want to do this again. My calendar is already overflowing.”

“Excuse me, Judge Fullbright,” Minton said. “Could I just ask what -”

“No, you may not,” she said, cutting him off. “What we are talking about does not concern the trial other than the timing of it. If Mr. Haller is assuring me that we don’t have a problem, then I will take him at his word. You need no further explanation than that.”

She looked pointedly at me.

“Do I have your word on this, Mr. Haller?”

I hesitated before nodding. What she was telling me was that there would be hell to pay if I broke my word and the Glendale investigation caused a disruption or mistrial in the Roulet case.

“You’ve got my word,” I said.

She immediately stood up and turned toward the hat rack in the corner. Her black robe hung there on a hanger.

“Okay, then, gentlemen, let’s get to it. We’ve got a jury waiting.”

Minton and I left the chambers and entered the courtroom through the clerk’s station. Roulet was seated in the defendant’s chair and waiting.

“What the hell was that all about?” Minton whispered to me.

He was playing dumb. He had to have heard the same rumors my ex-wife had picked up in the halls of the DA’s office.

“Nothing, Ted. Just some bullshit involving another case of mine. You going to wrap it up today?”

“Depends on you. The longer you take, the longer I take cleaning up the bullshit you sling.”

“Bullshit, huh? You’re bleeding to death and don’t even know it.”

He smiled confidently at me.

“I don’t think so.”

“Call it death by a thousand razor blades, Ted. One doesn’t do it. They all do it. Welcome to felony practice.”

I separated from him and went to the defense table. As soon as I sat down, Roulet was in my ear.

“What was that about with the judge?” he whispered.

“Nothing. She was just warning me about how I handle the victim on cross.”

“Who, the woman? She actually called her a victim?”

“Louis, first of all, keep your voice down. And second, she is the victim in this thing. You may have that rare ability to convince yourself of almost anything, but we still-no, make that I-still need to convince the jury.”

He took the rebuke like I was blowing bubbles in his face and moved on.

“Well, what did she say?”

“She said she isn’t going to allow me a lot of freedom in cross-examination. She reminded me that Regina Campo is a victim.”

“I’m counting on you to rip her to shreds, to borrow a quote from you on the day we met.”

“Yeah, well, things are a lot different than on the day we met, aren’t they? And your little scheme with my gun is about to blow up in my face. And I’m telling you right now, I’m not going down for it. If I have to drive people to the airport the rest of my life, I will do that and do it gladly if it’s my only way out from this. You understand, Louis?”

“I understand, Mick,” he said glibly. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You’re a smart man.”

I turned and looked at him. Luckily, I didn’t have to say anything further. The bailiff called the court to order and Judge Fullbright took the bench.

Minton’s first witness of the day was LAPD Detective Martin Booker. He was a solid witness for the prosecution. A rock. His answers were clear and concise and given without hesitation. Booker introduced the key piece of evidence, the knife with my client’s initials on it, and under Minton’s questioning he took the jury through his entire investigation of the attack on Regina Campo.

He testified that on the night of March 6 he had been working night duty out of Valley Bureau in Van Nuys. He was called to Regina Campo’s apartment by the West Valley Division watch commander, who believed, after being briefed by his patrol officers, that the attack on Campo merited immediate attention from an investigator. Booker explained that the six detective bureaus in the Valley were only staffed during daytime hours. He said the night-duty detective was a quick-response position and often assigned cases of a pressing nature.

“What made this case of pressing nature, Detective?” Minton asked.

“The injuries to the victim, the arrest of a suspect and the belief that a greater crime had probably been averted,” Booker answered.

“That greater crime being what?”

“Murder. It sounded like the guy was planning to kill her.”

I could have objected but I planned to exploit the exchange on cross-examination, so I let it go.

Minton walked Booker through the investigative steps he took at the crime scene and later while interviewing Campo as she was being treated at a hospital.

“Before you got to the hospital you had been briefed by Officers Maxwell and Santos on what the victim had reported had happened, correct?”

“Yes, they gave me an overview.”

“Did they tell you that the victim was engaged in selling sex to men for a living?”

“No, they didn’t.”

“When did you find that out?”

“Well, I was getting a pretty good sense of it when I was in her apartment and I saw some of the property she had there.”

“What property?”

“Things I would describe as sex aids, and in one of the bedrooms, there was a closet that only had negligees and clothing of a sexually provocative nature in it. There was also a television in that room and a collection of pornographic tapes in the drawers beneath it. I had been told that she did not have a roommate but it looked to me like both bedrooms were in active use. I started to think that one room was hers, like it was the one she slept in when she was alone, and the other was for her professional activities.”

“A trick pad?”

“You could call it that.”

“Did it change your opinion of her as a victim of this attack?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“And why not?”

“Because anybody can be a victim. Prostitute or pope, doesn’t matter. A victim is a victim.”

Spoken just as rehearsed, I thought. Minton made a check mark on his pad and moved on.

“Now, when you got to the hospital, did you ask the victim about your theory in regard to her bedrooms and what she did for a living?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She flat out said she was a working girl. She didn’t try to hide it.”

“Did anything she said to you differ from the accounts of the attack you had already gathered at the crime scene?”

“No, not at all. She told me she opened the door to the defendant and he immediately punched her in the face and drove her backwards into the apartment. He assaulted her further and produced a knife. He told her he was going to rape her and then kill her.”

Minton continued to probe the investigation in more detail and to the point of boring the jury. When I was not writing down questions to ask Booker during cross, I watched the jurors and saw their attention lag under the weight of so much information.

Finally, after ninety minutes of direct examination it was my turn with the police detective. My goal was to get in and get out. While Minton performed the whole case autopsy, I only wanted to go in and scrape cartilage out of the knees.

“Detective Booker, did Regina Campo explain why she lied to the police?”

“She didn’t lie to me.”

“Maybe not to you but she told the first officers on the scene, Maxwell and Santos, that she did not know why the suspect had come to her apartment, didn’t she?”

“I wasn’t present when they spoke to her so I can’t testify to that. I do know that she was scared, that she had just been beaten and threatened with rape and death at the time of the first interview.”

“So you are saying that under those circumstances it is acceptable to lie to the police.”

“No, I did not say that.”

I checked my notes and moved on. I wasn’t going for a linear continuum of questions. I was potshotting, trying to keep him off balance.

“Did you catalog the clothing you found in the bedroom you said Ms. Campo used for her prostitution business?”

“No, I did not. It was just an observation I made. It was not important to the case.”

“Would any of the outfits you saw in the closet have been appropriate to sadomasochistic sexual activities?”

“I wouldn’t know that. I am not an expert in that field.”

“How about the pornographic videos? Did you write down the titles?”

“No, I did not. Again, I did not believe that it was pertinent to the investigation of who had brutally assaulted this woman.”

“Do you recall if the subject matter of any of the videos involved sadomasochism or bondage or anything of that nature?”

“No, I do not.”

“Now, did you instruct Ms. Campo to get rid of those tapes and the clothing from the closet before members of Mr. Roulet’s defense team could view the apartment?”

“I certainly did not.”

I checked that one off my list and moved on.

“Have you ever spoken to Mr. Roulet about what happened in Ms. Campo’s apartment that night?”

“No, he lawyered up before I got to him.”

“Do you mean he exercised his constitutional right to remain silent?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what he did.”

“So, as far as you know, he never spoke to the police about what happened.”

“That is correct.”

“In your opinion, was Ms. Campo struck with great force?”

“I would say so, yes. Her face was very badly cut and swollen.”

“Then please tell the jury about the impact injuries you found on Mr. Roulet’s hands.”

“He had wrapped a cloth around his fist to protect it. There were no injuries on his hands that I could see.”

“Did you document this lack of injury?”

Booker looked puzzled by the question.

“No,” he said.

“So you had Ms. Campo’s injuries documented by photographs but you didn’t see the need to document Mr. Roulet’s lack of injuries, correct?”

“It didn’t seem to me to be necessary to photograph something that wasn’t there.”

“How do you know he wrapped his fist in a cloth to protect it?”

“Ms. Campo told me she saw that his hand was wrapped right before he punched her at the door.”

“Did you find this cloth he supposedly wrapped his hand in?”

“Yes, it was in the apartment. It was a napkin, like from a restaurant. It had her blood on it.”

“Did it have Mr. Roulet’s blood on it?”

“No.”

“Was there anything that identified it as belonging to the defendant?”

“No.”

“So we have Ms. Campo’s word for it, right?”

“That’s right.”

I let some time pass while I scribbled a note on my pad. I then continued to question the detective.

“Detective, when did you learn that Louis Roulet denied assaulting or threatening Ms. Campo and that he would be vigorously defending himself against the charges?”

“That would have been when he hired you, I guess.”

There was a murmur of laughter in the courtroom.

“Did you pursue other explanations for Ms. Campo’s injuries?”

“No, she told me what happened. I believed her. He beat her and was going to -”

“Thank you, Detective Booker. Just try to answer the question I ask.”

“I was.”

“If you looked for no other explanation because you believed the word of Ms. Campo, is it safe to say that this whole case relies upon her word and what she said occurred in her apartment on the night of March sixth?”

Booker deliberated a moment. He knew I was leading him into a trap of his own words. As the saying goes, there is no trap so deadly as the one you set for yourself.

“It’s not just her word,” he said after thinking he saw a way out. “There is physical evidence. The knife. Her injuries. More than just her word on this.”

He nodded affirmatively.

“But doesn’t the state’s explanation for her injuries and the other evidence begin with her telling of what happened?”

“You could say that, yes,” he said reluctantly.

“She is the tree on which all of these fruits grow, is she not?”

“I probably wouldn’t use those words.”

“Then what words would you use, Detective?”

I had him now. Booker was literally squirming in his seat. Minton stood up and objected, saying I was badgering the witness. It must have been something he had seen on TV or in a movie. He was told to sit down by the judge.

“You can answer the question, Detective,” the judge said.

“What was the question?” Booker asked, trying to buy some time.

“You disagreed with me when I characterized Ms. Campo as the tree from which all the evidence in the case grows,” I said. “If I am wrong, how would you describe her position in this case?”

Booker raised his hands in a quick gesture of surrender.

“She’s the victim! Of course she’s important because she told us what happened. We have to rely on her to set the course of the investigation.”

“You rely on her for quite a bit in this case, don’t you? Victim and chief witness against the defendant, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Who else saw the defendant attack Ms. Campo?”

“Nobody else.”

I nodded, to underline the answer for the jury. I looked over and exchanged eye contact with those in the front row.

“Okay, Detective,” I said. “I want to ask you about Charles Talbot now. How did you find out about this man?”

“Uh, the prosecutor, Mr. Minton, told me to find him.”

“And do you know how Mr. Minton came to know about his existence?”

“I believe you were the one who informed him. You had a videotape from a bar that showed him with the victim a couple hours before the attack.”

I knew this could be the point to introduce the video but I wanted to wait on that. I wanted the victim on the stand when I showed the tape to the jury.

“And up until that point you didn’t think it was important to find this man?”

“No, I just didn’t know about him.”

“So when you finally did know about Talbot and you located him, did you have his left hand examined to determine if he had any injuries that could have been sustained while punching someone repeatedly in the face?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Is that because you were confident in your choice of Mr. Roulet as the person who punched Regina Campo?”

“It wasn’t a choice. It was where the investigation led. I didn’t locate Charles Talbot until more than two weeks after the crime occurred.”

“So what you are saying is that if he’d had injuries, they would have been healed by then, correct?”

“I’m no expert on it but that was my thinking, yes.”

“So you never looked at his hand, did you?”

“Not specifically, no.”

“Did you question any coworkers of Mr. Talbot about whether they saw bruising or other injuries on his hand around the time of the crime?”

“No, I did not.”

“So you never really looked beyond Mr. Roulet, did you?”

“That is wrong. I come into every case with an open mind. But Roulet was there and in custody from the start. The victim identified him as her attacker. He was obviously a focus.”

“Was he a focus or the focus, Detective Booker?”

“He was both. At first he was a focus and later-after we found his initials on the weapon that had been held to Reggie Campo’s throat-he became the focus, you could say.”

“How do you know that knife was held to Ms. Campo’s throat?”

“Because she told us and she had the puncture wound to show for it.”

“Are you saying there was some sort of forensic analysis that matched the knife to the wound on her neck?”

“No, that was impossible.”

“So again we have Ms. Campo’s word that the knife was held to her throat by Mr. Roulet.”

“I had no reason to doubt her then. I have none now.”

“Now without any explanation for it, I guess you would consider the knife with the defendant’s initials on it to be a highly important piece of evidence of guilt, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. Even with explanation, I would say. He brought that knife in there with one purpose in mind.”

“You are a mind reader, are you, Detective?”

“No, I’m a detective. And I am just saying what I think.”

“Accent on think.”

“It’s what I know from the evidence in the case.”

“I’m glad you are so confident, sir. I have no further questions at this time. I reserve the right to recall Detective Booker as a witness for the defense.”

I had no intention of calling Booker back to the stand but I thought the threat might sound good to the jury.

I returned to my seat while Minton tried to bandage up Booker on redirect. The damage was in perceptions and there wasn’t a lot that he could do with that. Booker had only been a setup man for the defense. The real damage would come later.

After Booker stepped down, the judge called for the mid-morning break. She told the jurors to be back in fifteen minutes but I knew the break would last longer. Judge Fullbright was a smoker and had already faced highly publicized administrative charges for sneaking smokes in her chambers. That meant that for her to take care of her habit and avoid further scandal, she had to take the elevator down and leave the building and stand in the entry port where the jail buses come in. I figured I had at least a half hour.

I went out into the hallway to talk to Mary Alice Windsor and work my cell phone. It looked like I would be putting on witnesses in the afternoon session.

I was first approached by Roulet, who wanted to talk about my cross-examination of Booker.

“It looked to me like it went really well for us,” he said.

“Us?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You can’t tell whether it’s gone well until you get the verdict. Now leave me alone, Louis. I have to make some calls. And where is your mother? I am probably going to need her this afternoon. Is she going to be here?”

“She had an appointment this morning but she’ll be here. Just call Cecil and he’ll bring her in.”

After he walked away Detective Booker took his place, walking up to me and pointing a finger in my face.

“It’s not going to fly, Haller,” he said.

“What’s not going to fly?” I asked.

“Your whole bullshit defense. You’re going to crash and burn.”

“We’ll see.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. You know, you have some balls trying to trash Talbot with this. Some balls. You must need a wheelbarrow to carry them around in.”

“I’m just doing my job, Detective.”

“And some job it is. Lying for a living. Tricking people from looking at the truth. Living in a world without truth. Let me ask you something. You know the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?”

“No, what’s the difference?”

“One’s a bottom-feeding, shit-eating scum sucker. The other’s a fish.”

“That’s a good one, Detective.”

He left me then and I stood there smiling. Not because of the joke or the understanding that Lankford had probably been the one to elevate the insult from defense attorneys to all of lawyerdom when he had retold the joke to Booker. I smiled because the joke was confirmation that Lankford and Booker were in communication. They were talking and it meant that things were moving and in play. My plan was still holding together. I still had a chance.

THIRTY-FOUR

Every trial has a main event. A witness or a piece of evidence that becomes the fulcrum upon which everything swings one way or the other. In this case the main event was billed as Regina Campo, victim and accuser, and the case would seem to rest upon her performance and testimony. But a good defense attorney always has an understudy and I had mine, a witness secretly waiting in the wings upon whom I hoped to shift the weight of the trial.

Nevertheless, when Minton called Regina Campo to the stand after the break, it was safe to say all eyes were on her as she was led in and walked to the witness box. It was the first time anyone in the jury had seen her in person. It was also the first time I had ever seen her. I was surprised, but not in a good way. She was diminutive and her hesitant walk and slight posture belied the picture of the scheming mercenary I had been building in the jury’s collective consciousness.

Minton was definitely learning as he was going. With Campo he seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that less was more. He economically led her through the testimony. He first started with personal background before moving on to the events of March 6.

Regina Campo’s story was sadly unoriginal and that was what Minton was counting on. She told the story of a young, attractive woman coming to Hollywood from Indiana a decade before with hopes of celluloid glory. There were starts and stops to a career, an appearance on a television show here and there. She was a fresh face and there were always men willing to put her in small meaningless parts. But when she was no longer a fresh face, she found work in a series of straight-to-cable films which often required her to appear nude. She supplemented her income with nude modeling jobs and slipped easily into a world of trading sex for favors. Eventually, she skipped the façade altogether and started trading sex for money. It finally brought her to the night she encountered Louis Roulet.

Regina Campo’s courtroom version of what happened that night did not differ from the accounts offered by all previous witnesses in the trial. But where it was dramatically different was in the delivery. Campo, with her face framed by dark, curly hair, seemed like a little girl lost. She appeared scared and tearful during the latter half of her testimony. Her lower lip and finger shook with fear as she pointed to the man she identified as her attacker. Roulet stared right back, a blank expression on his face.

“It was him,” she said in a strong voice. “He’s an animal who should be put away!”

I let that go without objection. I would get my chance with her soon enough. Minton continued the questioning, taking Campo through her escape, and then asked why she had not told the responding officers the truth about knowing who the man who attacked her was and why he was there.

“I was scared,” she said. “I wasn’t sure they would believe me if I told them why he was there. I wanted to make sure they arrested him because I was very afraid of him.”

“Do you regret that decision now?”

“Yes, I do because I know it might help him get free to do this again to somebody.”

I did object to that answer as prejudicial and the judge sustained it. Minton threw a few more questions at his witness but seemed to know he was past the apex of the testimony and that he should stop before he obscured the trembling finger of identification.

Campo had testified on direct examination for slightly less than an hour. It was almost 11:30 but the judge did not break for lunch as I had expected. She told the jurors she wanted to get as much testimony in as possible during the day and that they would go to a late, abbreviated lunch. This made me wonder if she knew something I didn’t. Had the Glendale detectives called her during the mid-morning break to warn of my impending arrest?

“Mr. Haller, your witness,” she said to prompt me and keep things going.

I went to the lectern with my legal pad and looked at my notes. If I was engaged in a defense of a thousand razors, I had to use at least half of them on this witness. I was ready.

“Ms. Campo, have you engaged the services of an attorney to sue Mr. Roulet over the alleged events of March sixth?”

She looked as though she had expected the question, but not as the first one out of the chute.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Have you talked to an attorney about this case?”

“I haven’t hired anybody to sue him. Right now, all I am interested in is seeing that justice is -”

“Ms. Campo,” I interrupted. “I didn’t ask whether you hired an attorney or what your interests are. I asked if you had talked to an attorney-any attorney-about this case and a possible lawsuit against Mr. Roulet.”

She was looking closely at me, trying to read me. I had said it with the authority of someone who knew something, who had the goods to back up the charge. Minton had probably schooled her on the most important aspect of testifying: don’t get trapped in a lie.

“Talked to an attorney, yes. But it was nothing more than talk. I didn’t hire him.”

“Is that because the prosecutor told you not to hire anybody until the criminal case was over?”

“No, he didn’t say anything about that.”

“Why did you talk to an attorney about this case?”

She had dropped into a routine of hesitating before every answer. This was fine with me. The perception of most people is that it takes time to tell a lie. Honest responses come easily.

“I talked to him because I wanted to know my rights and to make sure I was protected.”

“Did you ask him if you could sue Mr. Roulet for damages?”

“I thought what you say to your attorney is private.”

“If you wish, you can tell the jurors what you spoke to the attorney about.”

There was the first deep slash with the razor. She was in an untenable position. No matter how she answered she would not look good.

“I think I want to keep it private,” she finally said.

“Okay, let’s go back to March sixth, but I want to go a little further back than Mr. Minton did. Let’s go back to the bar at Morgan’s when you first spoke to the defendant, Mr. Roulet.”

“Okay.”

“What were you doing at Morgan’s that night?”

“I was meeting someone.”

“Charles Talbot?”

“Yes.”

“Now, you were meeting him there to sort of size up whether you wanted to lead him back to your place to engage in sex for hire, correct?”

She hesitated but then nodded.

“Please answer verbally,” the judge told her.

“Yes.”

“Would you say that practice is a safety precaution?”

“Yes.”

“A form of safe sex, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Because in your profession you deal intimately with strangers, so you must protect yourself, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“People in your profession call this the ‘freak test,’ don’t they?”

“I’ve never called it that.”

“But it is true that you meet your prospective clients in a public place like Morgan’s to test them out and make sure they aren’t freaks or dangerous before you take them to your apartment. Isn’t that right?”

“You could say that. But the truth is, you can never be sure about somebody.”

“That is true. So when you were at Morgan’s you noticed Mr. Roulet sitting at the same bar as you and Mr. Talbot?”

“Yes, he was there.”

“And had you ever seen him before?”

“Yes, I had seen him there and a few other places before.”

“Had you ever spoken to him?”

“No, we never talked.”

“Had you ever noticed that he wore a Rolex watch?”

“No.”

“Had you ever seen him drive up or away from one of these places in a Porsche or a Range Rover?”

“No, I never saw him driving.”

“But you had seen him before in Morgan’s and other places like it.”

“Yes.”

“But never spoke to him.”

“Correct.”

“Then, what made you approach him?”

“I knew he was in the life, that’s all.”

“What do you mean by ‘in the life’?”

“I mean that the other times I had seen him I could tell he was a player. I’d seen him leave with girls that do what I do.”

“You saw him leave with other prostitutes?”

“Yes.”

“Leave to where?”

“I don’t know, leave the premises. Go to a hotel or the girl’s apartment. I don’t know that part.”

“Well, how do you know they even left the premises? Maybe they went outside for a smoke.”

“I saw them get into his car and drive away.”

“Ms. Campo, you testified a minute ago that you never saw Mr. Roulet’s cars. Now you are saying that you saw him get into his car with a woman who is a prostitute like yourself. Which is it?”

She realized her misstep and froze for a moment until an answer came to her.

“I saw him get into a car but I didn’t know what kind it was.”

“You don’t notice things like that, do you?”

“Not usually.”

“Do you know the difference between a Porsche and a Range Rover?”

“One’s big and one’s small, I guess.”

“What kind of car did you see Mr. Roulet get into?”

“I don’t remember.”

I paused a moment and decided I had milked her contradiction for all it was worth. I looked down at my list of questions and moved on.

“These women that you saw leave with Mr. Roulet, were they ever seen again?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Did they disappear? Did you ever see them again?”

“No, I saw them again.”

“Had they been beaten or injured?”

“Not that I know of but I didn’t ask.”

“But all of this added up to you believing that you were safe as far as approaching and soliciting him, correct?”

“I don’t know about safe. I just knew he was probably there looking for a girl and the man I was with already told me he would be finished by ten because he had to go to his business.”

“Well, can you tell the jury why it was that you did not have to sit with Mr. Roulet like you did with Mr. Talbot and subject him to a freak test?”

Her eyes drifted over to Minton. She was hoping for a rescue but none was coming.

“I just thought he was a known quantity, that’s all.”

“You thought he was safe.”

“I guess so. I don’t know. I needed the money and I made a mistake with him.”

“Did you think he was rich and could solve your need for money?”

“No, nothing like that. I saw him as a potential customer who wasn’t new to the game. Somebody who knew what he was doing.”

“You testified that on prior occasions you had seen Mr. Roulet with other women who practice the same profession as yourself?”

“Yes.”

“They’re prostitutes.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know them?”

“We’re acquaintances.”

“And do you extend professional courtesy to these women in terms of alerting them to customers who might be dangerous or unwilling to pay?”

“Sometimes.”

“And they extend the same professional courtesy to you, right?”

“Yes.”

“How many of them warned you about Louis Roulet?”

“Well, nobody did, or I wouldn’t have gone with him.”

I nodded and looked at my notes for a long moment before continuing. I then led her in more detail through the events at Morgan’s and then introduced the video surveillance tape from the bar’s overhead camera. Minton objected to it being shown to the jury without proper foundation but he was overruled. A television on an industrial stand was wheeled in front of the jury and the video was played. I could tell by the rapt attention they paid to it that they were enamored with the idea of watching a prostitute at work as well as the aspect of seeing the two main players in the case in unguarded moments.

“What did the note say that you passed him?” I asked after the television was pushed to the side of the courtroom.

“I think it just said my name and address.”

“You didn’t quote him a price for the services you would perform?”

“I may have. I don’t remember.”

“What is the going rate that you charge?”

“Usually I get four hundred dollars.”

“Usually? What would make you differentiate from that?”

“Depends on what the client wants.”

I looked over at the jury box and saw that the Bible man’s face was getting tight with discomfort.

“Do you ever engage in bondage and domination with your clients?”

“Sometimes. It’s only role playing, though. Nobody ever gets hurt. It’s just playacting.”

“Are you saying that before the night of March sixth, you have never been hurt by a client?”

“Yes, that’s what I am saying. That man hurt me and tried to kill -”

“Please just answer the question I ask, Ms. Campo. Thank you. Now, let’s go back to Morgan’s. Yes or no, at the moment you gave Mr. Roulet the napkin with your address and price on it, you were confident that he would not be a danger to you and that he was carrying sufficient cash funds to pay the four hundred dollars you demand for your services?”

“Yes.”

“So, why didn’t Mr. Roulet have any cash on him when the police searched him?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t take it.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

I hesitated for a long moment, preferring to punctuate my shifts in questioning streams with an underscore of silence.

“Now, uh, you are still working as a prostitute, correct?” I asked.

Campo hesitated before saying yes.

“And are you happy working as a prostitute?” I asked.

Minton stood.

“Your Honor, what does this have to do with -”

“Sustained,” the judge said.

“Okay,” I said. “Then, isn’t it true, Ms. Campo, that you have told several of your clients that your hope is to leave the business?”

“Yes, that’s true,” she answered without hesitation for the first time in many questions.

“Isn’t it also true that you see the potential financial aspects of this case as a means of getting out of the business?”

“No, that’s not true,” she said forcefully and without hesitation. “That man attacked me. He was going to kill me! That’s what this is about!”

I underlined something on my pad, another punctuation of silence.

“Was Charles Talbot a repeat customer?” I asked.

“No, I met him for the first time that night at Morgan’s.”

“And he passed your safety test.”

“Yes.”

“Was Charles Talbot the man who punched you in the face on March sixth?”

“No, he was not,” she answered quickly.

“Did you offer to split the profits you would receive from a lawsuit against Mr. Roulet with Mr. Talbot?”

“No, I did not. That’s a lie!”

I looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, can I ask my client to stand up at this time?”

“Be my guest, Mr. Haller.”

I signaled Roulet to stand at the defense table and he obliged. I looked back at Regina Campo.

“Now, Ms. Campo, are you sure that this is the man who struck you on the night of March sixth?”

“Yes, it’s him.”

“How much do you weigh, Ms. Campo?”

She leaned back from the microphone as if put out by what was an invasive question, even coming after so many questions pertaining to her sex life. I noticed Roulet start to sit back down and I signaled him to remain standing.

“I’m not sure,” Campo said.

“On your ad on the website you list your weight at one hundred and five pounds,” I said. “Is that correct?”

“I think so.”

“So if the jury is to believe your story about March sixth, then they must believe that you were able to overpower and break free of Mr. Roulet.”

I pointed to Roulet, who was easily six feet and outweighed her by at least seventy-five pounds.

“Well, that’s what I did.”

“And this was while he supposedly was holding a knife to your throat.”

“I wanted to live. You can do some amazing things when your life is in danger.”

She used her last defense. She started crying, as if my question had reawakened the horror of coming so close to death.

“You can sit down, Mr. Roulet. I have nothing else for Ms. Campo at this time, Your Honor.”

I took my seat next to Roulet. I felt the cross had gone well. My razor work had opened up a lot of wounds. The state’s case was bleeding. Roulet leaned over and whispered one word to me. “Brilliant!”

Minton went back in for a redirect but he was just a gnat flitting around an open wound. There was no going back on some of the answers his star witness had given, and there was no way to change some of the images I had planted in the jurors’ minds.

In ten minutes he was through and I waived off a recross, feeling that Minton had accomplished little during his second effort and I could leave well enough alone. The judge asked the prosecutor if he had any further witnesses and Minton said he would like to think about it through lunch before deciding whether to rest the state’s case.

Normally, I would have objected to this because I would want to know if I had to put a witness on the stand directly after lunch. But I let it go. I believed that Minton was feeling the pressure and was wavering. I wanted to push him toward a decision and thought maybe giving him the lunch hour would help.

The judge excused the jury to lunch, giving them only an hour instead of the usual ninety minutes. She was going to keep things moving. She said court would recess until 1:30 and then abruptly left the bench. She probably needed a cigarette, I guessed.

I asked Roulet if his mother could join us for lunch so that we could talk about her testimony, which I thought would come in the afternoon if not directly after lunch. He said he would arrange it and suggested we meet at a French restaurant on Ventura Boulevard. I told him we had less than an hour and that his mother should meet us at Four Green Fields. I didn’t like the idea of bringing them into my sanctuary but I knew we could eat there quickly and be back to court on time. The food probably wasn’t up to the standards of the French bistro on Ventura but I wasn’t worried about that.

When I got up and turned from the defense table, I saw the rows of the gallery were empty. Everybody had hustled out to lunch. Only Minton was waiting by the rail for me.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

“Sure.”

We waited until Roulet had gone through the gate and left the courtroom before either one of us spoke. I knew what was coming. It was customary for the prosecutor to throw out a low-ball disposition at the first sign of trouble. Minton knew he had trouble. The main-event witness was a draw at best.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I was thinking about what you said about the thousand razors.”

“And?”

“And, well, I want to make you an offer.”

“You’re new at this, kid. Don’t you need somebody in charge to approve a plea agreement?”

“I have some authority.”

“Okay, then give me what you are authorized to offer.”

“I’ll drop it all down to an aggravated assault with GBI.”

“And?”

“I’ll go down to four.”

The offer was a substantial reduction but Roulet, if he took it, would still be sentenced to four years in prison. The main concession was that it knocked the case out of sex crime status. Roulet would not have to register with local authorities as a sex offender after he got out of prison.

I looked at him as if he had just insulted my mother’s memory.

“I think that’s a little strong, Ted, considering how your ace just held up on the stand. Did you see the juror who is always carrying the Bible? He looked like he was about to shit the Good Book when she was testifying.”

Minton didn’t respond. I could tell he hadn’t even noticed a juror carrying a Bible.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s my duty to bring your offer to my client and I will do that. But I’m also going to tell him he’d be a fool to take it.”

“Okay, then, what do you want?”

“A case like this, there’s only one verdict, Ted. I’m going to tell him he should ride it out. I think it’s clear sailing from here. Have a good lunch.”

I left him there at the gate, halfway expecting him to shout a new offer to my back as I went down the center aisle of the gallery. But Minton held his ground.

“That offer’s good only until one-thirty, Haller,” he called after me, an odd tone in his voice.

I raised a hand and waved without looking back. As I went through the courtroom door, I was sure that what I had heard was the sound of desperation creeping into his voice.

THIRTY-FIVE

After we came back into court from Four Green Fields I purposely ignored Minton. I wanted to keep him guessing as long as possible. It was all part of the plan to push him in a direction I wanted him and the trial to go. When we were all seated at the tables and ready for the judge, I finally looked over at him, waited for the eye contact, and then just shook my head. No deal. He nodded, trying his best to give me a show of confidence in his case and confusion over my client’s decision. One minute later the judge took the bench, brought out the jury, and Minton promptly folded his tent.

“Mr. Minton, do you have another witness?” the judge asked.

“Your Honor, at this time the state rests.”

There was the slightest hesitation in Fullbright’s response. She stared at Minton for just a second longer than she should have. I think it sent a message of surprise to the jury. She then looked over at me.

“Mr. Haller, are you ready to proceed?”

The routine procedure would be to ask the judge for a directed verdict of acquittal at the end of the state’s case. But I didn’t, fearing that this could be the rare occasion that the request was granted. I couldn’t let the case end yet. I told the judge I was ready to proceed with a defense.

My first witness was Mary Alice Windsor. She was escorted into the courtroom by Cecil Dobbs, who then took a seat in the front row of the gallery. Windsor was wearing a powder blue suit with a chiffon blouse. She had a regal bearing as she crossed in front of the bench and took a seat in the witness box. Nobody would have guessed she had eaten shepherd’s pie for lunch. I very quickly went through the routine identifiers and established her relationship by both blood and business to Louis Roulet. I then asked the judge for permission to show the witness the knife the prosecution had entered as evidence in the case.

Permission granted, I went to the court clerk to retrieve the weapon, which was still wrapped in a clear plastic evidence bag. It was folded so that the initials on the blade were visible. I took it to the witness box and put it down in front of the witness.

“Mrs. Windsor, do you recognize this knife?”

She picked up the evidence bag and attempted to smooth the plastic over the blade so she could look for and read the initials.

“Yes, I do,” she finally said. “It’s my son’s knife.”

“And how is it that you would recognize a knife owned by your son?”

“Because he showed it to me on more than one occasion. I knew he always carried it and sometimes it came in handy at the office when our brochures came in and we needed to cut the packing straps. It was very sharp.”

“How long did he have the knife?”

“Four years.”

“You seem pretty exact about that.”

“I am.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he got it for protection four years ago. Almost exactly.”

“Protection from what, Mrs. Windsor?”

“In our business we often show homes to complete strangers. Sometimes we are the only ones in the home with these strangers. There has been more than one incident of a realtor being robbed or hurt… or even murdered or raped.”

“As far as you know, was Louis ever the victim of such a crime?”

“Not personally, no. But he knew someone who had gone into a home and that happened to them…”

“What happened?”

“She got raped and robbed by a man with a knife. Louis was the one who found her after it was over. The first thing he did was go out and get a knife for protection after that.”

“Why a knife? Why not a gun?”

“He told me that at first he was going to get a gun but he wanted something he could always carry and not be noticeable with. So he got a knife and he got me one, too. That’s how I know it was almost exactly four years ago that he got this.”

She held the bag up containing the knife.

“Mine’s exactly the same, only the initials are different. We both have been carrying them ever since.”

“So would it seem to you that if your son was carrying that knife on the night of March sixth, then that would be perfectly normal behavior from him?”

Minton objected, saying I had not built the proper foundation for Windsor to answer the question and the judge sustained it. Mary Windsor, being unschooled in criminal law, assumed that the judge was allowing her to answer.

“He carried it every day,” she said. “March sixth would have been no dif -”

“Mrs. Windsor,” the judge boomed. “I sustained the objection. That means you do not answer. The jury will disregard her answer.”

“I’m sorry,” Windsor said in a weak voice.

“Next question, Mr. Haller,” the judge ordered.

“That’s all I have, Your Honor. Thank you, Mrs. Windsor.”

Mary Windsor started to get up but the judge admonished her again, telling her to stay seated. I returned to my seat as Minton got up from his. I scanned the gallery and saw no recognizable faces save that of C. C. Dobbs. He gave me an encouraging smile, which I ignored.

Mary Windsor’s direct testimony had been perfect in terms of her adhering to the choreography we had worked up at lunch. She had succinctly delivered to the jury the explanation for the knife, yet she had also left in her testimony a minefield that Minton would have to cross. Her direct testimony had covered no more than I had provided Minton in a discovery summary. If he strayed from it he would quickly hear the deadly click under his foot.

“This incident that inspired your son to start carrying around a five-inch folding knife, when exactly was that?”

“It happened on June ninth in two thousand and one.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

I turned in my seat so I could more fully see Minton’s face. I was reading him. He thought he had something. Windsor ’s exact memory of a date was obvious indication of planted testimony. He was excited. I could tell.

“Was there a newspaper story about this supposed attack on a fellow realtor?”

“No, there wasn’t.”

“Was there a police investigation?”

“No, there wasn’t.”

“And yet you know the exact date. How is that, Mrs. Windsor? Were you given this date before testifying here?”

“No, I know the date because I will never forget the day I was attacked.”

She waited a moment. I saw at least three of the jurors open their mouths silently. Minton did the same. I could almost hear the click.

“My son will never forget it, either,” Windsor continued. “When he came looking for me and found me in that house, I was tied up, naked. There was blood. It was traumatic for him to see me that way. I think that was one of the reasons he took to carrying a knife. I think in some ways he wished he had gotten there earlier and been able to stop it.”

“I see,” Minton said, staring down at his notes.

He froze, unsure how to proceed. He didn’t want to raise his foot for fear that the mine would detonate and blow it off.

“Mr. Minton, anything else?” the judge asked, a not so well disguised note of sarcasm in her voice.

“One moment, Your Honor,” Minton said.

Minton gathered himself, reviewed his notes and tried to salvage something.

“Mrs. Windsor, did you or your son call the police after he found you?”

“No, we didn’t. Louis wanted to but I did not. I thought that it would only further the trauma.”

“So we have no official police documentation of this crime, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

I knew that Minton wanted to carry it further and ask if she had sought medical treatment after the attack. But sensing another trap, he didn’t ask the question.

“So what you are saying here is that we only have your word that this attack even occurred? Your word and your son’s, if he chooses to testify.”

“It did occur. I live with it each and every day.”

“But we only have you who says so.”

She looked at the prosecutor with deadpan eyes.

“Is that a question?”

“Mrs. Windsor, you are here to help your son, correct?”

“If I can. I know him as a good man who would not have committed this despicable crime.”

“You would be willing to do anything and everything in your power to save your son from conviction and possible prison, wouldn’t you?”

“But I wouldn’t lie about something like this. Oath or no oath, I wouldn’t lie.”

“But you want to save your son, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And saving him means lying for him, doesn’t it?”

“No. It does not.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Windsor.”

Minton quickly returned to his seat. I had only one question on redirect.

“Mrs. Windsor, how old were you when this attack occurred?”

“I was fifty-four.”

I sat back down. Minton had nothing further and Windsor was excused. I asked the judge to allow her to sit in the gallery for the remainder of the trial, now that her testimony was concluded. Without an objection from Minton the request was granted.

My next witness was an LAPD detective named David Lambkin, who was a national expert on sex crimes and had worked on the Real Estate Rapist investigation. In brief questioning I established the facts of the case and the five reported cases of rape that were investigated. I quickly got to the five key questions I needed to bolster Mary Windsor’s testimony.

“Detective Lambkin, what was the age range of the known victims of the rapist?”

“These were all professional women who were pretty successful. They tended to be older than your average rape victim. I believe the youngest was twenty-nine and the oldest was fifty-nine.”

“So a woman who was fifty-four years old would have fallen within the rapist’s target profile, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell the jury when the first reported attack occurred and when the last reported attack occurred?”

“Yes. The first was October one, two thousand, and the last one was July thirtieth of two thousand and one.”

“So June ninth of two thousand and one was well within the span of this rapist’s attacks on women in the real estate business, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“In the course of your investigation of this case, did you come to a conclusion or belief that there were more than five rapes committed by this individual?”

Minton objected, saying the question called for speculation. The judge sustained the objection but it didn’t matter. The question was what was important and the jury seeing the prosecutor keeping the answer from them was the payoff.

Minton surprised me on cross. He recovered enough from the misstep with Windsor to hit Lambkin with three solid questions with answers favorable to the prosecution.

“Detective Lambkin, did the task force investigating these rapes issue any kind of warning to women working in the real estate business?”

“Yes, we did. We sent out fliers on two occasions. The first went to all licensed real estate businesses in the area and the next mail-out went to all licensed real estate brokers individually, male and female.”

“Did these mail-outs contain information about the rapist’s description and methods?”

“Yes, they did.”

“So if someone wished to concoct a story about being attacked by this rapist, the mail-outs would have provided all the information needed, correct?”

“That is a possibility, yes.”

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Minton proudly sat down and Lambkin was excused when I had nothing further. I asked the judge for a few minutes to confer with my client and then leaned in close to Roulet.

“Okay, this is it,” I said. “You’re all we have left. Unless there’s something you haven’t told me, you’re clean and there isn’t much Minton can come back at you with. You should be safe up there unless you let him get to you. Are you still cool with this?”

Roulet had said all along that he would testify and deny the charges. He had reiterated his desire again at lunch. He demanded it. I always viewed the risks of letting a client testify as evenly split. Anything he said could come back to haunt him if the prosecution could bend it to the state’s favor. But I also knew that no matter what admonishments were given to a jury about a defendant’s right to remain silent, the jury always wanted to hear the defendant say he didn’t do it. You take that away from the jury and they might hold a grudge.

“I want to do it,” Roulet whispered. “I can handle the prosecutor.”

I pushed my chair back and stood up.

“The defense calls Louis Ross Roulet, Your Honor.”

THIRTY-SIX

Louis Roulet moved toward the witness box quickly, like a basketball player pulled off the bench and sent to the scorer’s table to check into the game. He looked like a man anxious for the opportunity to defend himself. He knew this posture would not be lost on the jury.

After dispensing with the preliminaries, I got right down to the issues of the case. Under my questioning Roulet freely admitted that he had gone to Morgan’s on the night of March 6 to seek female companionship. He said he wasn’t specifically looking to engage the services of a prostitute but was not against the possibility.

“I had been with women I had to pay before,” he said. “So I wouldn’t have been against it.”

He testified that he had no conscious eye contact with Regina Campo before she approached him at the bar. He said that she was the aggressor but at the time that didn’t bother him. He said the solicitation was open-ended. She said she would be free after ten and he could come by if he was not otherwise engaged.

Roulet described efforts made over the next hour at Morgan’s and then at the Lamplighter to find a woman he would not have to pay but said he was unsuccessful. He then drove to the address Campo had given him and knocked on the door.

“Who answered?”

“She did. She opened the door a crack and looked out at me.”

“ Regina Campo? The woman who testified this morning?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Could you see her whole face through the opening in the door?”

“No. She only opened up a crack and I couldn’t see her. Only her left eye and a little bit of that side of her face.”

“How did the door open? Was this crack through which you could see her on the right or left side?”

“As I was looking at the door the opening would have been on the right.”

“So let’s make sure we make this clear. The opening was on the right, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So if she were standing behind the door and looking through the opening, she would be looking at you with her left eye.”

“That is correct.”

“Did you see her right eye?”

“No.”

“So if she had a bruise or a cut or any damage on the right side of her face, could you have seen it?”

“No.”

“Okay. So what happened next?”

“She saw it was me and she said come in. She opened the door wider but still sort of stood behind it.”

“You couldn’t see her?”

“Not completely. She was using the edge of the door as sort of a block.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, it was kind of like an entry area, a vestibule, and she pointed through an archway to the living room. I went the way she pointed.”

“Did this mean that she was then behind you?”

“Yes, when I turned toward the living room she was behind me.”

“Did she close the door?”

“I think so. I heard it close.”

“And then what?”

“Something hit me on the back of my head and I went down. I blacked out.”

“Do you know how long you were out?”

“No. I think it was a while but none of the police or anybody ever told me.”

“What do you remember when you regained consciousness?”

“I remember having a hard time breathing and when I opened my eyes, there was somebody sitting on me. I was on my back and he was sitting on me. I tried to move and that was when I realized somebody was sitting on my legs, too.”

“What happened next?”

“They took turns telling me not to move and one of them told me they had my knife and if I tried to move or escape he would use it on me.”

“Did there come a time that the police came and you were arrested?”

“Yes, a few minutes later the police were there. They handcuffed me and made me stand up. That was when I saw I had blood on my jacket.”

“What about your hand?”

“I couldn’t see it because it was handcuffed behind my back. But I heard one of the men who had been sitting on me tell the police officer that there was blood on my hand and then the officer put a bag over it. I felt that.”

“How did the blood get on your hand and jacket?”

“All I know is that somebody put it on there because I didn’t.”

“Are you left-handed?”

“No, I am not.”

“You didn’t strike Ms. Campo with your left fist?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you threaten to rape her?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you tell her you were going to kill her if she didn’t cooperate with you?”

“No, I did not.”

I was hoping for some of the fire I had seen on that first day in C. C. Dobbs’s office but Roulet was calm and controlled. I decided that before I finished with him on direct I needed to push things a little to get some of that anger back. I had told him at lunch I wanted to see it and wasn’t sure what he was doing or where it had gone.

“Are you angry about being charged with attacking Ms. Campo?”

“Of course I am.”

“Why?”

He opened his mouth but didn’t speak. He seemed outraged that I would ask such a question. Finally, he responded.

“What do you mean, why? Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do and there’s nothing you can do about it but wait? Just wait for weeks and months until you finally get a chance to go to court and say you’ve been set up. But then you have to wait even longer while the prosecutor puts on a bunch of liars and you have to listen to their lies and just wait your chance. Of course it makes you angry. I am innocent! I did not do this!”

It was perfect. To the point and playing to anybody who had ever been falsely accused of anything. There was more I could ask but I reminded myself of the rule: get in and get out. Less is always more. I sat down. If I decided there was anything I had missed I would clean it up on redirect.

I looked at the judge.

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

Minton was up and ready before I even got back to my seat. He moved to the lectern without breaking his steely glare away from Roulet. He was showing the jury what he thought of this man. His eyes were like lasers shooting across the room. He gripped the sides of the lectern so hard his knuckles were white. It was all a show for the jury.

“You deny touching Ms. Campo,” he said.

“That’s right,” Roulet retorted.

“According to you she just punched herself or had a man she had never met before that night punch her lights out for her as part of this setup, is that correct?”

“I don’t know who did it. All I know is that I didn’t.”

“But what you are saying is that this woman, Regina Campo, is lying. She came into this courtroom today and flat out lied to the judge and the jury and the whole wide world.”

Minton punctuated the sentence by shaking his head with disgust.

“All I know is that I did not do the things she said I did. The only explanation is that one of us is lying. It’s not me.”

“That will be for the jury to decide, won’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And this knife you supposedly got for your own protection. Are you telling this jury that the victim in this case somehow knew you had a knife and used it as part of the setup?”

“I don’t know what she knew. I had never shown the knife to her or in a bar where she would have been. So I don’t see how she could have known about it. I think that when she went into my pocket for the money she found the knife. I always keep my knife and money in the same pocket.”

“Oh, so now you have her stealing money out of your pocket as well. When does this end with you, Mr. Roulet?”

“I had four hundred dollars with me. When I was arrested it was gone. Someone took it.”

Rather than try to pinpoint Roulet on the money, Minton was wise enough to know that no matter how he handled it, he would be facing a break-even proposition at best. If he tried to make a case that Roulet never had the money and that his plan was to attack and rape Campo rather than pay her, then he knew I would trot out Roulet’s tax returns, which would throw serious doubt on the idea that he couldn’t afford to pay a prostitute. It was an avenue of testimony commonly referred to by lawyers as a “cluster fuck” and he was staying away. He moved on to his finish.

In dramatic style Minton held up the evidence photo of Regina Campo’s beaten and bruised face.

“So Regina Campo is a liar,” he said.

“Yes.”

“She had this done to her or maybe even did it herself.”

“I don’t know who did it.”

“But not you.”

“No, it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t do that to a woman. I wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

Roulet pointed to the photo Minton had continued to hold up.

“No woman deserves that,” he said.

I leaned forward and waited. Roulet had just said the line I had told him to somehow find a way of putting into one of his answers during testimony. No woman deserves that. It was now up to Minton to take the bait. He was smart. He had to understand that Roulet had just opened a door.

“What do you mean by deserves? Do you think crimes of violence come down to a matter of whether a victim gets what they deserve?”

“No. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that no matter what she does for a living, she shouldn’t have been beaten like that. Nobody deserves to have that happen to them.”

Minton brought down the arm that held the photo. He looked at it himself for a moment and then looked back up at Roulet.

“Mr. Roulet, I have nothing more to ask you.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

I still felt that I was winning the razor fight. I had done everything possible to maneuver Minton into a position in which he had only one choice. It was now time to see if doing everything possible had been enough. After the young prosecutor sat down, I chose not to ask my client another question. He had held up well under Minton’s attack and I felt the wind was in our sails. I stood up and looked back at the clock on the upper rear wall of the courtroom. It was only three-thirty. I then looked back at the judge.

“Your Honor, the defense rests.”

She nodded and looked over my head at the clock. She told the jury to take the mid-afternoon break. Once the jurors were out of the courtroom, she looked at the prosecution table where Minton had his head down and was writing.

“Mr. Minton?”

The prosecutor looked up.

“We’re still in session. Pay attention. Does the state have rebuttal?”

Minton stood.

“Your Honor, I would ask that we adjourn for the day so that the state has time to consider rebuttal witnesses.”

“Mr. Minton, we still have at least ninety minutes to go today. I told you I wanted to be productive today. Where are your witnesses?”

“Frankly, Your Honor, I was not anticipating the defense resting after only three witnesses and I -”

“He gave fair warning of that in his opening statement.”

“Yes, but still the case has moved faster than anticipated. We’re a half day ahead. I would beg the court’s indulgence. I would be hard-pressed to get the rebuttal witness I am considering even into court before six o’clock tonight.”

I turned and looked at Roulet, who had returned to the seat next to mine. I nodded to him and winked with my left eye so the judge would not see the gesture. It looked like Minton had swallowed the bait. Now I just had to make sure the judge didn’t make him spit it out. I stood up.

“Your Honor, the defense has no objection to the delay. Maybe we can use the time to prepare closing arguments and instructions to the jury.”

The judge first looked at me with a puzzled frown. It was a rarity that the defense would not object to prosecutorial foot dragging. But then the seed I had planted began to bloom.

“You may have an idea there, Mr. Haller. If we adjourn early today I will expect that we will go to closing statements directly after rebuttal. No further delays except to consider jury instructions. Is that understood, Mr. Minton?”

“Yes, Your Honor, I will be ready.”

“Mr. Haller?”

“It was my idea, Judge. I’ll be ready.”

“Very well, then. We have a plan. As soon as the jurors are back I will dismiss them for the day. They’ll beat the traffic and tomorrow things will run so smoothly and quickly that I have no doubt they will be deliberating by the afternoon session.”

She looked at Minton and then me, as if daring one of us to disagree with her. When we didn’t, she got up and left the bench, probably in pursuit of a cigarette.

Twenty minutes later the jury was heading home and I was gathering my things at the defense table. Minton stepped over and said, “Can I talk to you?”

I looked at Roulet and told him to head out with his mother and Dobbs and that I would call him if I needed him for anything.

“But I want to talk to you, too,” he said.

“About what?”

“About everything. How do you think I did up there?”

“You did good and everything is going good. I think we’re in good shape.”

I then nodded my head toward the prosecution table where Minton had returned and dropped my voice to a whisper.

“He knows it, too. He’s about to make another offer.”

“Should I stick around to hear what it is?”

I shook my head.

“No, it doesn’t matter what it is. There’s only one verdict, right?”

“That’s right.”

He patted my shoulder when he got up and I had to steady myself not to shrink away from the touch.

“Don’t touch me, Louis,” I said. “You want to do something for me, then give me my fucking gun back.”

He didn’t reply. He just smiled and moved toward the gate. After he was gone I turned to look at Minton. He now had the gleam of desperation in his eye. He needed a conviction-any conviction-on this case.

“What’s up?”

“I have another offer.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ll drop it down further. Take it down to simple assault. Six months in county. The way they empty that place out at the end of every month, he probably won’t do sixty days actual.”

I nodded. He was talking about the federal mandate to stop overcrowding in the county jail system. It didn’t matter what was handed down in a courtroom; out of necessity, sentences were often drastically cut. It was a good offer but I didn’t show anything. I knew the offer had to have come from the second floor. Minton wouldn’t have had the authority to go so low.

“He takes that and she’ll rob him blind in civil,” I said. “I doubt he’ll go for it.”

“That’s a damn good offer,” Minton said.

There was a hint of outrage in his voice. My guess was that the observer’s report card on Minton was not good and he was under orders to close the case out with a guilty plea. Trash the trial and the judge’s and jury’s time, just get that plea. The Van Nuys office didn’t like losing cases and we were only two months removed from the Robert Blake fiasco. It pleaded them out when the going got rough. Minton could go as low as he needed to go, just as long as he got something. Roulet had to go down-even if it was only for sixty days actual.

“Maybe from your side of things it’s a damn good offer. But it still means I have to convince a client to plead to something he says he didn’t do. Then on top of that, the dispo still opens the door to civil liability. So while he’s sitting up there in county trying to protect his asshole for sixty days, Reggie Campo and her lawyer are down here taking him to the cleaners. You see? It’s not so good when you look at it from his angle. If it was left to me, I’d ride the trial out. I think we’re winning. I know we’ve got the Bible guy, so we’ve got a hanger at minimum. But who knows, maybe we’ve got all twelve.”

Minton slapped his hand down on his table.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You know he did this thing, Haller. And six months-let alone sixty days-for what he did to that woman is a joke. It’s a fucking travesty that I’ll lose sleep over, but they’ve been watching and think you’ve got the jury, so I have to do it.”

I closed my briefcase with an authoritative snap and stood up.

“Then I hope you got something good for rebuttal, Ted. Because you’re going to get your wish for a jury verdict. And I have to tell you, man, you’re looking more and more like a guy who came naked to a razor fight. Better get your hands off your nuts and fight back.”

I headed through the gate. Halfway to the doors at the back of the courtroom I stopped and looked back at him.

“Hey, you know something? If you lose sleep over this or any other case, then you gotta quit the job and go do something else. Because you’re not going to make it, Ted.”

Minton sat at his table, staring straight ahead at the empty bench. He didn’t acknowledge what I had said. I left him there thinking about it. I thought I had played it right. I’d find out in the morning.

I went back over to Four Green Fields to work on my closing. I wouldn’t need the two hours the judge had given us. I ordered a Guinness at the bar and took it over to one of the tables to sit by myself. Table service didn’t start again until six. I sketched out some basic notes but I instinctively knew I would largely be reacting to the state’s presentation. In pretrial motions, Minton had already asked and received permission from Judge Fullbright to use a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate the case to the jury. It had become all the rage with young prosecutors to put up the screen and flash computer graphics on it, as if the jurors couldn’t be trusted to think and make connections on their own. It now had to be fed to them like TV.

My clients rarely had the money to pay my fees, let alone for PowerPoint presentations. Roulet was an exception. Through his mother he could afford to hire Francis Ford Coppola to put together a PowerPoint for him if he wanted it. But I never even brought it up. I was strictly old school. I liked going into the ring on my own. Minton could throw whatever he wanted up on the big blue screen. When it was my turn I wanted the jury looking only at me. If I couldn’t convince them, nothing from a computer could, either.

At 5:30 I called Maggie McPherson at her office.

“It’s quitting time,” I said.

“Maybe for big-shot defense pros. Us public servants have to work till after dark.”

“Why don’t you take a break and come meet me for a Guinness and some shepherd’s pie, then you can go back to work and finish up.”

“No, Haller. I can’t do that. Besides, I know what you want.”

I laughed. There was never a time that she didn’t think she knew what I wanted. Most of the time she was right but not this time.

“Yeah? What do I want?”

“You’re going to try to corrupt me again and find out what Minton is up to.”

“Not a chance, Mags. Minton is an open book. Smithson’s observer is giving him bad marks. So Smithson’s told him to fold the tent, get something and get out. But Minton’s been working on his little PowerPoint closing and wants to gamble, take it all the way to the house. Besides that, he’s got genuine outrage in his blood, so he doesn’t like the idea of folding up.”

“Neither do I. Smithson’s always afraid of losing-especially since Blake. He always wants to sell short. You can’t be that way.”

“I always said they lost the Blake case the minute they passed you over. You tell ’em, Maggie.”

“If I ever get the chance.”

“Someday.”

She didn’t like dwelling on her own stalled career. She moved on.

“So you sound chipper,” she said. “Yesterday you were a murder suspect. Today you’ve got the DA by the short hairs. What changed?”

“Nothing. It’s just the calm before the storm, I guess. Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever put a rush on ballistics?”

“What kind of ballistics?”

“Matching casing to casing and slug to slug.”

“Depends on who is doing it-which department, I mean. But if they put a real rush on it, they could have something in twenty-four hours.”

I felt the dull thud of dread drop into my stomach. I knew I could be on borrowed time.

“Most of the time, though, that doesn’t happen,” she continued. “Two or three days is what it will usually take on a rush. And if you want the whole package-casing and slug comparisons-it could take longer because the slug could be damaged and tough to read. They have to work with it.”

I nodded. I didn’t think any of that could help me. I knew they had recovered a bullet casing at the crime scene. If Lankford and Sobel got a match on that to the casing of a bullet fired fifty years ago from Mickey Cohen’s gun, they would come for me and worry about the slug comparison later.

“You still there?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah. I was just thinking of something.”

“You don’t sound so chipper anymore. You want to talk about this, Michael?”

“No, not right now. But if I end up needing a good lawyer, you know who I’ll call.”

“That’ll be the day.”

“You might be surprised.”

I let some more silence into the conversation. Just having her on the other end of the line was a calming comfort. I liked it.

“Haller, I should get back to my job now.”

“Okay, Maggie, put those bad guys away.”

“I will.”

“Good night.”

I closed the phone and thought about things for a few moments, then opened it up again and called the Sheraton Universal to see if they had a room available. I had decided that as a precaution I would not go home this night. There might be two detectives from Glendale waiting for me.

THIRTY-EIGHT

After a sleepless night in a bad hotel bed I got to the courthouse early on Wednesday morning and found no welcoming party, no Glendale detectives waiting with smiles and a warrant for my arrest. A flash of relief went through me as I made my way through the metal detector. I was wearing the same suit I had worn the day before but was hoping no one would notice. I did have a fresh shirt and tie on. I keep spares in the trunk of the Lincoln for summer days when I’m working up in the desert and the car’s air conditioner can get overwhelmed.

When I got to Judge Fullbright’s courtroom I was surprised to find I was not the first of the trial’s players to arrive. Minton was in the gallery, setting up the screen for his PowerPoint presentation. Because the courtroom had been designed before the era of computer-enhanced presentations, there was no place to put a twelve-foot screen in comfortable view of the jury, the judge, and the lawyers. A good chunk of the gallery space would be taken up by the screen, and any spectator who sat behind it wouldn’t get to see the show.

“Bright and early,” I said to Minton.

He looked over from his work and seemed a bit surprised to see me in early as well.

“Have to work out the logistics of this thing. It’s kind of a pain.”

“You could always do it the old-fashioned way and just look at the jury and talk directly to them.”

“No, thanks. I like this better. Did you talk to your client about the offer?”

“Yeah, no sale. Looks like we ride this one to the end.”

I put my briefcase down on the defense table and wondered if the fact that Minton was setting up for his closing argument meant he had decided against mounting any kind of rebuttal. A sharp jab of panic went through me. I looked over at the state’s table and saw nothing that gave me a clue to what Minton was planning. I knew I could flat out ask him but I did not want to give away my appearance of disinterested confidence.

Instead, I sauntered over to the bailiff’s desk to talk to Bill Meehan, the deputy who ran Fullbright’s court. I saw on his desk a spread of paperwork. He would have the courtroom calendar as well as the list of custodies bused to the courthouse that morning.

“Bill, I’m going to grab a cup of coffee. You want something?”

“No, man, but thanks. I’m set on caffeine. For a while, at least.”

I smiled and nodded.

“Hey, is that the custody list? Can I take a look and see if any of my clients are on it?”

“Sure.”

Meehan handed me several pages that were stapled together. It was a listing by name of every inmate that was now housed in the courthouse’s jails. Following the name was the courtroom each prisoner was headed to. Acting as nonchalant as I could I scanned the list and quickly found the name Dwayne Jeffery Corliss on it. Minton’s snitch was in the building and was headed to Fullbright’s court. I almost let out a sigh of relief but kept it all inside. It looked like Minton was going to play things the way I had hoped and planned.

“Something wrong?” Meehan asked.

I looked at him and handed back the list.

“No, why?”

“I don’t know. You look like something happened, is all.”

“Nothing’s happened yet but it will.”

I left the courtroom and went down to the cafeteria on the second floor. When I was in line paying for my coffee I saw Maggie McPherson walk in and go directly to the coffee urns. After I paid I walked up behind her as she was mixing powder from a pink packet into her coffee.

“Sweet ’N Low,” I said. “My ex-wife used to tell me that’s how she liked it.”

She turned and saw me.

“Stop, Haller.”

But she smiled.

“Stop, Haller, or I’ll holler,” I said. “She used to have to say that, too. A lot.”

“What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be up on six getting ready to pull the plug on Minton’s PowerPoint?”

“I’m not worried. In fact, you ought to come up and check it out. Old school versus new school, a battle for the ages.”

“Hardly. By the way, isn’t that the same suit you were wearing yesterday?”

“Yeah, it’s my lucky suit. But how do you know what I was wearing yesterday?”

“Oh, I popped my head in Fullbite’s court for a couple minutes yesterday. You were too busy questioning your client to notice.”

I was secretly pleased that she would even notice my suits. I knew it meant something.

“So, then, why don’t you pop your head in again this morning?”

“Today I can’t. I’m too busy.”

“What’ve you got?”

“I’m taking over a murder one for Andy Seville. He’s quitting to go private and yesterday they divided up his cases. I got the good one.”

“Nice. Does the defendant need a lawyer?”

“No way, Haller. I’m not losing another one to you.”

“Just kidding. I’ve got my hands full.”

She snapped a top onto her cup and picked it up off the counter, using a layer of napkins as insulation against its heat.

“Same here. So I’d wish you good luck today but I can’t.”

“Yeah, I know. Gotta keep the company line. Just cheer up Minton when he comes down with his hat in his hand.”

“I’ll try.”

She left the cafeteria and I walked over to an empty table. I still had fifteen minutes before the trial was supposed to start up again. I pulled out my cell and called my second ex-wife.

“Lorna, it’s me. We’re in play with Corliss. Are you set?”

“I’m ready.”

“Okay, I’m just checking. I’ll call you.”

“Good luck today, Mickey.”

“Thanks. I’ll need it. You be ready for the next call.”

I closed the phone and was about to get up when I saw LAPD Detective Howard Kurlen cutting through the tables toward me. The man who put Jesus Menendez in prison didn’t look like he was stopping in for a peanut butter and sardine sandwich. He was carrying a folded document. He got to my table and dropped it in front of my coffee cup.

“What is this shit?” he demanded.

I started unfolding the document, even though I knew what it was.

“Looks like a subpoena, Detective. I would’ve thought you’d know what it is.”

“You know what I mean, Haller. What’s the game? I’ve got nothing to do with that case up there and I don’t want to be a part of your bullshit.”

“It’s no game and it’s no bullshit. You’ve been subpoenaed as a rebuttal witness.”

“To rebut what? I told you and you already know, I didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with that case. It’s Marty Booker’s and I just talked to him and he said it’s gotta be a mistake.”

I nodded like I wanted to be accommodating.

“I’ll tell you what, go on up to the courtroom and take a seat. If it’s a mistake I’ll get it straightened out as soon as I can. I doubt you’ll be here another hour. I’ll get you out of there and back chasing the bad guys.”

“How about this? I leave now and you straighten it out whenever the fuck you want.”

“I can’t do that, Detective. That is a valid and lawful subpoena and you must appear in that courtroom unless otherwise discharged. I told you, I will do that as soon as I can. The state’s got one witness and then it’s my turn and I’ll take care of it.”

“This is such bullshit.”

He turned from me and stalked back through the cafeteria toward the doorway. Luckily, he had left the subpoena with me, because it was phony. I had never registered it with the court clerk and the scribbled signature at the bottom was mine.

Bullshit or not, I didn’t think Kurlen was leaving the courthouse. He was a man who understood duty and the law. He lived by it. It was what I was counting on. He would be in the courtroom until discharged. Or until he understood why I had called him there.

THIRTY-NINE

At 9:30 the judge put the jury in the box and immediately proceeded with the day’s business. I glanced back at the gallery and caught sight of Kurlen in the back row. He had a pensive, if not angry, cast to his face. He was close to the door and I didn’t know how long he would last. I was figuring I would need that whole hour I had told him about.

I glanced further around the room and saw that Lankford and Sobel were sitting on a bench next to the bailiff’s desk that was designated for law enforcement personnel. Their faces revealed nothing but they still put the pause in me. I wondered if I would even get the hour I needed.

“Mr. Minton,” the judge intoned, “does the state have any rebuttal?”

I turned back to the court. Minton stood up, adjusted his jacket and then seemed to hesitate and brace himself before responding.

“Yes, Your Honor, the state calls Dwayne Jeffery Corliss as a rebuttal witness.”

I stood up and noticed to my right that Meehan, the bailiff, had stood up as well. He was going to go into the courtroom lockup to retrieve Corliss.

“Your Honor?” I said. “Who is Dwayne Jeffery Corliss and why wasn’t I told about him before now?”

“Deputy Meehan, hold on a minute,” Fullbright said.

Meehan stood frozen with the key to the lockup door poised in his hand. The judge then apologized to the jury but told them they had to go back into the deliberation room until recalled. After they filed through the door behind the box, the judge turned her focus onto Minton.

“Mr. Minton, do you want to tell us about your witness?”

“Dwayne Corliss is a cooperating witness who spoke with Mr. Roulet when he was in custody following his arrest.”

“Bullshit!” Roulet barked. “I didn’t talk to -”

“Be quiet, Mr. Roulet,” the judge boomed. “Mr. Haller, instruct your client on the danger of outbursts in my courtroom.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

I was still standing. I leaned down to whisper in Roulet’s ear.

“That was perfect,” I said. “Now be cool and I’ll take it from here.”

He nodded and leaned back. He angrily folded his arms across his chest. I straightened up.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, but I do share my client’s outrage over this last-ditch effort by the state. This is the first we have heard of Mr. Corliss. I would like to know when he came forward with this supposed conversation.”

Minton had remained standing. I thought it was the first time in the trial that we had stood side by side and argued to the judge.

“Mr. Corliss first contacted the office through a prosecutor who handled the first appearance of the defendant,” Minton said. “However, that information was not passed on to me until yesterday when in a staff meeting I was asked why I had never acted on the information.”

This was a lie but not one I wanted to expose. To do so would reveal Maggie McPherson’s slip on St. Patrick’s Day and it might also derail my plan. I had to be careful. I needed to argue vigorously against Corliss taking the stand but I also needed to lose the argument.

I put my best look of outrage on my face.

“This is incredible, Your Honor. Just because the DA’s office has a communication problem, my client has to suffer the consequences of not being informed that the state had a witness against him? This man should clearly not be allowed to testify. It’s too late to bring him in now.”

“Your Honor,” Minton said, jumping in quickly. “I have had no time to interview or depose Mr. Corliss myself. Because I was preparing my closing I simply made arrangements for him to be brought here today. His testimony is key to the state’s case because it serves as rebuttal to Mr. Roulet’s self-serving statements. To not allow his testimony is a serious disservice to the state.”

I shook my head and smiled in frustration. With his last line Minton was threatening the judge with the loss of the DA’s backing should she ever face an election with an opposing candidate.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge asked. “Anything before I rule?”

“I just want my objection on the record.”

“So noted. If I were to give you time to investigate and interview Mr. Corliss, how much would you need?”

“A week.”

Now Minton put on the fake smile and shook his head.

“That’s ridiculous, Your Honor.”

“Do you want to go back and talk to him?” the judge asked me. “I’ll allow it.”

“No, Your Honor. As far as I’m concerned all jailhouse snitches are liars. It would do me no good to interview him because anything that comes out of his mouth would be a lie. Anything. Besides, it’s not what he has to say. It’s what others have to say about him. That’s what I would need time for.”

“Then I am going to rule that he can testify.”

“Your Honor,” I said. “If you are going to allow him into this courtroom, could I ask one indulgence for the defense?”

“What is that, Mr. Haller?”

“I would like to step into the hallway and make a quick phone call to an investigator. It will take me less than a minute.”

The judge thought for a moment and then nodded.

“Go ahead. I will bring the jury in while you do it.”

“Thank you.”

I hurried through the gate and down the middle aisle. My eyes caught those of Howard Kurlen and he gave me one of his best smirks.

In the hallway I speed-dialed Lorna Taylor’s cell phone and she answered right away.

“Okay, how far away are you?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

“Did you remember the printout and the tape?”

“Got it all right here.”

I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to ten.

“Okay, well, we’re in play here. Don’t delay getting here but then I want you to wait out in the hall outside the courtroom. Then at ten-fifteen come into court and give it to me. If I’m crossing the witness, just sit in the first row and wait until I notice you.”

“Got it.”

I closed the phone and went back into the courtroom. The jury was seated and Meehan was leading a man in a gray jumpsuit through the lockup door. Dwayne Corliss was a thin man with stringy hair that wasn’t getting washed enough in the lockdown drug program at County-USC. He wore a blue plastic hospital ID band on his wrist. I recognized him. He was the man who had asked me for a business card when I interviewed Roulet in the holding cell my first day on the case.

Corliss was led by Meehan to the witness box and the court clerk swore him in. Minton took over the show from there.

“Mr. Corliss, were you arrested on March fifth of this year?”

“Yes, the police arrested me for burglary and possession of drugs.”

“Are you incarcerated now?”

Corliss looked around.

“Um, no, I don’t think so. I’m just in the courtroom.”

I heard Kurlen’s coarse laugh behind me but nobody joined in.

“No, I mean are you currently being held in jail? When you are not here in court.”

“I’m in a lockdown drug treatment program in the jail ward at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.”

“Are you addicted to drugs?”

“Yes. I’m addicted to heroin but at the moment I am straight. I haven’t had any since I got arrested.”

“More than sixty days.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you recognize the defendant in this case?”

Corliss looked over at Roulet and nodded.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I met him in lockup after I got arrested.”

“You are saying that after you were arrested you came into close proximity to the defendant, Louis Roulet?”

“Yes, the next day.”

“How did that happen?”

“Well, we were both in Van Nuys jail but in different wards. Then, when we got bused over here to the courts, we were together, first in the bus and then in the tank and then when we were brought into the courtroom for first appearance. We were together all of that time.”

“When you say ‘together,’ what do you mean?”

“Well, we sort of stuck close because we were the only white guys in the group we were in.”

“Now, did you talk at all while you were together for all of that time?”

Corliss nodded his head and at the same time Roulet shook his. I touched my client’s arm to caution him to make no demonstrations.

“Yes, we talked,” Corliss said.

“About what?”

“Mostly about cigarettes. We both needed them but they don’t let you smoke in the jail.”

Corliss made a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture with both hands and a few of the jurors-probably smokers-smiled and nodded.

“Did you reach a point where you asked Mr. Roulet what got him into jail?” Minton asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“What did he say?”

I quickly stood up and objected but just as quickly was overruled.

“What did he tell you, Mr. Corliss?” Minton prompted.

“Well, first he asked me why I was there and I told him. So then I asked him why he was in and he said, ‘For giving a bitch exactly what she deserved.’”

“Those were his words?”

“Yes.”

“Did he elaborate further on what he meant by that?”

“No, not really. Not on that.”

I leaned forward, waiting for Minton to ask the next obvious question. But he didn’t. He moved on.

“Now, Mr. Corliss, have you been promised anything by me or the district attorney’s office in return for your testimony?”

“Nope. I just thought it was the right thing to do.”

“What is the status of your case?”

“I still got the charges against me, but it looks like if I complete my program I’ll be able to get a break on them. The drugs, at least. I don’t know about the burglary yet.”

“But I have made no promise of help in that regard, correct?”

“No, sir, you haven’t.”

“Has anyone else from the district attorney’s office made any promises?”

“No, sir.”

“I have no further questions.”

I sat unmoving and just staring at Corliss. My pose was that of a man who was angry but didn’t know exactly what to do about it. Finally, the judge prompted me into action.

“Mr. Haller, cross-examination?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I stood up, glancing back at the door as if hoping a miracle would walk through it. I then checked the big clock on the back door and saw it was five minutes after ten. I noticed as I turned back to the witness that I had not lost Kurlen. He was still in the back row and he still had the same smirk on his face. I realized that it might have been his natural look.

I turned to the witness.

“Mr. Corliss, how old are you?”

“Forty-three.”

“You go by Dwayne?”

“That’s right.”

“Any other names?”

“People called me D.J. when I was growing up. Everybody called me that.”

“And where did you grow up?”

“ Mesa, Arizona.”

“Mr. Corliss, how many times have you been arrested before?”

Minton objected but the judge overruled. I knew she was going to give me a lot of room with this witness since I was the one who had supposedly been sandbagged.

“How many times have you been arrested before, Mr. Corliss?” I asked again.

“I think about seven.”

“So you’ve been in a number of jails in your time, haven’t you?”

“You could say that.”

“All in Los Angeles County?”

“Mostly. But I got arrested over in Phoenix before, too.”

“So you know how the system works, don’t you?”

“I just try to survive.”

“And sometimes surviving means ratting out your fellow inmates, doesn’t it?”

“Your Honor?” Minton said, standing to object.

“Take a seat, Mr. Minton,” Fullbright said. “I gave you a lot of leeway bringing this witness in. Mr. Haller gets his share of it now. The witness will answer the question.”

The stenographer read the question back to Corliss.

“I suppose so.”

“How many times have you snitched on another inmate?”

“I don’t know. A few times.”

“How many times have you testified in a court proceeding for the prosecution?”

“Would that include my own cases?”

“No, Mr. Corliss. For the prosecution. How many times have you testified against a fellow inmate for the prosecution?”

“I think this is my fourth time.”

I looked surprised and aghast, although I was neither.

“So you are a pro, aren’t you? You could almost say your occupation is drug-addicted jailhouse snitch.”

“I just tell the truth. If people tell me things that are bad, then I feel obligated to report it.”

“But you try to get people to tell you things, don’t you?”

“No, not really. I guess I’m just a friendly guy.”

“A friendly guy. So what you expect this jury to believe is that a man you didn’t know would just come out of the blue and tell you-a perfect stranger-that he gave a bitch exactly what she deserved. Is that correct?”

“It’s what he said.”

“So he just mentioned that to you and then you both just went back to talking about cigarettes after that, is that right?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly? What do you mean by ‘not exactly’?”

“He also told me he did it before. He said he got away with it before and he would get away with it now. He was bragging about it because with the other time, he said he killed the bitch and got away with it.”

I froze for a moment. I then glanced at Roulet, who sat as still as a statue with surprise on his face, and then back at the witness.

“You…”

I started and stopped, acting like I was the man in the minefield who had just heard the click come from beneath my foot. In my peripheral vision I noticed Minton’s body posture tightening.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge prompted.

I broke my stare from Corliss and looked at the judge.

“Your Honor, I have no further questions at this time.”

FORTY

Minton came up from his seat like a boxer coming out of his corner at his bleeding opponent. “Redirect, Mr. Minton?” Fullbright asked.

But he was already at the lectern.

“Absolutely, Your Honor.”

He looked at the jury as if to underline the importance of the upcoming exchange and then at Corliss.

“You said he was bragging, Mr. Corliss. How so?”

“Well, he told me about this time he actually killed a girl and got away with it.”

I stood up.

“Your Honor, this has nothing to do with the case at hand and it is rebuttal to no evidence previously offered by the defense. The witness can’t -”

“Your Honor,” Minton cut in, “this is information brought forward by defense counsel. The prosecution is entitled to pursue it.”

“I will allow it,” Fullbright said.

I sat down and appeared dejected. Minton plowed ahead. He was going just where I wanted him to go.

“Mr. Corliss, did Mr. Roulet offer any of the details of this previous incident in which he said he got away with killing a woman?”

“He called the girl a snake dancer. She danced in some joint where she was like in a snake pit.”

I felt Roulet wrap his fingers around my biceps and squeeze. His hot breath came into my ear.

“What the fuck is this?” he whispered.

I turned to him.

“I don’t know. What the hell did you tell this guy?”

He whispered back through gritted teeth.

“I didn’t tell him anything. This is a setup. You set me up!”

“Me? What are you talking about? I told you, I couldn’t get to this guy in lockdown. If you didn’t tell him this shit, then somebody else did. Start thinking. Who?”

I turned and looked up at Minton standing at the lectern and continuing his questioning of Corliss.

“Did Mr. Roulet say anything else about the dancer he said he murdered?” he asked.

“No, that’s all he really told me.”

Minton checked his notes to see if there was anything else, then nodded to himself.

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

The judge looked at me. I could almost see sympathy on her face.

“Any recross from the defense with this witness?”

Before I could answer, there was a noise from the rear of the courtroom and I turned to see Lorna Taylor entering. She hurriedly walked down the aisle toward the gate.

“Your Honor, can I have a moment to confer with my staff?”

“Hurry, Mr. Haller.”

I met Lorna at the gate and took from her a videotape with a single piece of paper wrapped around it with a rubber band. As she had been told to do earlier, she whispered in my ear.

“This is where I act like I am whispering something very important into your ear,” she said. “How is it going?”

I nodded as I took the rubber band off the tape and looked at the piece of paper.

“Perfect timing,” I whispered back. “I’m good to go.”

“Can I stay and watch?”

“No, I want you out of here. I don’t want anybody talking to you after this goes down.”

I nodded and she nodded and then she left. I went back to the lectern.

“No recross, Your Honor.”

I sat down and waited. Roulet grabbed my arm.

“What are you doing?”

I pushed him away.

“Stop touching me. We have new information we can’t bring up on cross.”

I focused on the judge.

“Any other witnesses, Mr. Minton?” she asked.

“No, Your Honor. No further rebuttal.”

The judge nodded.

“The witness is excused.”

Meehan started crossing the courtroom to Corliss. The judge looked at me and I started to stand.

“Mr. Haller, surrebuttal?”

“Yes, Your Honor, the defense would like to call D.J. Corliss back to the stand as surrebuttal.”

Meehan stopped in his tracks and all eyes were on me. I held up the tape and the paper Lorna had brought me.

“I have new information on Mr. Corliss, Your Honor. I could not have brought it up on cross.”

“Very well. Proceed.”

“Can I have a moment, Judge?”

“A short one.”

I huddled with Roulet again.

“Look, I don’t know what is going on but it doesn’t matter,” I whispered.

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Are you -”

“Listen to me. It doesn’t matter because I can still destroy him. Doesn’t matter if he says you killed twenty women. If he’s a liar, he’s a liar. If I destroy him, none of it counts. You understand?”

Roulet nodded and seemed to calm as he considered this.

“Then destroy him.”

“I will. But I have to know. Is there anything else he knows that could come out? Is there anything I need to stay away from?”

Roulet whispered slowly, as if explaining something to a child.

“I don’t know because I never talked to him. I’m not that stupid as to have a discussion about cigarettes and murder with a total fucking stranger!”

“Mr. Haller,” the judge prompted.

I looked up at her.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Carrying the tape and the paper that came with it, I stood up to go back to the lectern. On the way I took a quick glance across the gallery and saw that Kurlen was gone. I had no way of knowing how long he had stayed and what he had heard. Lankford was gone as well. Only Sobel remained and she averted her eyes from mine. I turned my attention to Corliss.

“Mr. Corliss, can you tell the jury exactly where you were when Mr. Roulet supposedly made these revelations to you about murder and assault?”

“When we were together.”

“Together where, Mr. Corliss?”

“Well, on the bus ride we didn’t talk because we were in different seats. But when we got to the courthouse, we were in the same holding cell with about six other guys and we sat together there and we talked.”

“And those six other men all witnessed you and Mr. Roulet talking, correct?”

“They woulda had to. They were there.”

“So what you are saying is that if I brought them in here one by one and asked them if they observed you and Mr. Roulet talking, they would confirm that?”

“Well, they should. But…”

“But what, Mr. Corliss?”

“It’s just that they probably wouldn’t talk, that’s all.”

“Is it because nobody likes a snitch, Mr. Corliss?”

Corliss shrugged.

“I guess so.”

“Okay, so let’s make sure we have all of this straight. You didn’t talk with Mr. Roulet on the bus but you did talk to him when you were in the holding cell together. Anywhere else?”

“Yeah, we talked when they moved us on out into the courtroom. They stick you in this glassed-in area and you wait for your case to be called. We talked some in there, too, until his case got called. He went first.”

“This is in the arraignment court where you had your first appearance before a judge?”

“That’s right.”

“So you two were talking in the court and this is where Mr. Roulet would have revealed his part in these crimes you described.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you remember specifically what he told you when you were in the courtroom?”

“No, not really. Not specifics. I think that might have been when he told me about the girl who was a dancer.”

“Okay, Mr. Corliss.”

I held the videotape up, described it as video of Louis Roulet’s first appearance, and asked to enter it as a defense exhibit. Minton tried to block it as something I had not produced during discovery, but that was easily and quickly shot down by the judge without my having to argue the point. He then objected again, citing the lack of authentication of the tape.

“I am just trying to save the court some time,” I said. “If needed I can have the man who took the film here in about an hour to authenticate it. But I think that Your Honor will be able to authenticate it herself with just one look.”

“I am going to allow it,” the judge said. “Once we see it the prosecution can object again if so inclined.”

The television and video unit I had used previously was rolled into the courtroom and placed at an angle viewable by Corliss, the jury and the judge. Minton had to move to a chair to the side of the jury box to fully see it. The tape was played. It lasted twenty minutes and showed Roulet from the moment he entered the courtroom custody area until he was led out after the bail hearing. At no time did Roulet talk to anyone but me. When the tape was over I left the television in its place in case it was needed again. I addressed Corliss with a tinge of outrage in my voice.

“Mr. Corliss, did you see a moment anywhere on that tape where you and Mr. Roulet were talking?”

“Uh, no. I -”

“Yet, you testified under oath and penalty of perjury that he confessed crimes to you while you were both in the courtroom, didn’t you?”

“I know I said that but I must have been mistaken. He must have told me everything when we were in the holding cell.”

“You lied to the jury, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to. That was the way I remembered it but I guess I was wrong. I was coming off a high that morning. Things got confused.”

“It would seem that way. Let me ask you, were things confused when you testified against Frederic Bentley back in nineteen eighty-nine?”

Corliss knitted his eyebrows together in concentration but didn’t answer.

“You remember Frederic Bentley, don’t you?”

Minton stood.

“Objection. Nineteen eighty-nine? Where is he going with this?”

“Your Honor,” I said. “This goes to the veracity of the witness. It is certainly at issue here.”

“Connect the dots, Mr. Haller,” the judge ordered. “In a hurry.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I picked up the piece of paper and used it as a prop during my final questions of Corliss.

“In nineteen eighty-nine Frederic Bentley was convicted, with your help, of raping a sixteen-year-old girl in her bed in Phoenix. Do you remember this?”

“Barely,” Corliss said. “I’ve done a lot of drugs since then.”

“You testified at his trial that he confessed the crime to you while you were both together in a police station holding cell. Isn’t that correct?”

“Like I said, it’s hard for me to remember back then.”

“The police put you in that holding cell because they knew you were willing to snitch, even if you had to make it up, didn’t they?”

My voice was rising with each question.

“I don’t remember that,” Corliss responded. “But I don’t make things up.”

“Then, eight years later, the man who you testified had told you he did it was exonerated when a DNA test determined that the semen from the girl’s attacker came from another man. Isn’t that correct, sir?”

“I don’t… I mean… that was a long time ago.”

“Do you remember being questioned by a reporter for the Arizona Star newspaper following the release of Frederic Bentley?”

“Vaguely. I remember somebody calling but I didn’t say anything.”

“He told you that DNA tests exonerated Bentley and asked you whether you fabricated Bentley’s confession, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

I held the paper I was clutching up toward the bench.

“Your Honor, I have an archival story from the Arizona Star newspaper here. It is dated February ninth, nineteen ninety-seven. A member of my staff came across it when she Googled the name D.J. Corliss on her office computer. I ask that it be marked as a defense exhibit and admitted into evidence as a historical document detailing an admission by silence.”

My request set off a brutal clash with Minton about authenticity and proper foundation. Ultimately, the judge ruled in my favor. She was showing some of the same outrage I was manufacturing, and Minton didn’t stand much of a chance.

The bailiff took the computer printout to Corliss, and the judge instructed him to read it.

“I’m not too good at reading, Judge,” he said.

“Try, Mr. Corliss.”

Corliss held the paper up and leaned his face into it as he read.

“Out loud, please,” Fullbright barked.

Corliss cleared his throat and read in a halting voice.

“‘A man wrongly convicted of rape was released Saturday from the Arizona Correctional Institution and vowed to seek justice for other inmates falsely accused. Frederic Bentley, thirty-four, served almost eight years in prison for attacking a sixteen-year-old Tempe girl. The victim of the assault identified Bentley, a neighbor, and blood tests matched his type to semen recovered from the victim after the attack. The case was bolstered at trial by testimony from an informant who said Bentley had confessed the crime to him while they were housed together in a holding cell. Bentley always maintained his innocence during the trial and even after his conviction. Once DNA testing was accepted as valid evidence by courts in the state, Bentley hired attorneys to fight for such testing of semen collected from the victim of the attack. A judge ordered the testing earlier this year, and the resulting analysis proved Bentley was not the attacker.

“‘At a press conference yesterday at the Arizona Biltmore the newly freed Bentley railed against jailhouse informants and called for a state law that would put strict guidelines on police and prosecutors who wish to use them.

“‘The informant who claimed in sworn testimony that Bentley admitted the rape was identified as D.J. Corliss, a Mesa man who had been arrested on drug charges. When told of Bentley’s exoneration and asked whether he fabricated his testimony against Bentley, Corliss declined comment Saturday. At his press conference, Bentley charged that Corliss was well known to the police as a snitch and was used in several cases to get close to suspects. Bentley claimed that Corliss’s practice was to make up confessions if he could not draw them out of the suspects. The case against Bentley -’”

“Okay, Mr. Corliss,” I said. “I think that is enough.”

Corliss put the printout down and looked at me like a child who has opened the door of a crowded closet and sees everything about to fall out on top of him.

“Were you ever charged with perjury in the Bentley case?” I asked him.

“No, I wasn’t,” he said forcefully, as if that fact exonerated him of wrongdoing.

“Was that because the police were complicit with you in setting up Mr. Bentley?”

Minton objected, saying, “I am sure Mr. Corliss would have no idea what went into the decision of whether or not to charge him with perjury.”

Fullbright sustained it but I didn’t care. I was so far ahead on this witness that there was no catching up. I just moved on to the next question.

“Did any prosecutor or police officer ask you to get close to Mr. Roulet and get him to confide in you?”

“No, it was just luck of the draw, I guess.”

“You were not told to get a confession from Mr. Roulet?”

“No, I was not.”

I stared at him for a long moment with disgust in my eyes.

“I have nothing further.”

I carried the pose of anger with me to my seat and dropped the tape box angrily down in front of me before sitting down.

“Mr. Minton?” the judge asked.

“I have nothing further,” he responded in a weak voice.

“Okay,” Fullbright said quickly. “I am going to excuse the jury for an early lunch. I would like you all back here at one o’clock sharp.”

She put on a strained smile and directed it at the jurors and kept it there until they had filed out of the courtroom. It dropped off her face the moment the door was closed.

“I want to see counsel in my chambers,” she said. “Immediately.”

She didn’t wait for any response. She left the bench so fast that her robe flowed up behind her like the black gown of the grim reaper.

FORTY-ONE

Judge Fullbright had already lit a cigarette by the time Minton and I got back to her chambers. After one long drag she put it out against a glass paperweight and then put the butt into a Ziploc bag she had taken out of her purse. She closed the bag, folded it and replaced it in the purse. She would leave no evidence of her transgression for the night cleaners or anyone else. She exhaled the smoke toward a ceiling intake vent and then brought her eyes down to Minton’s. Judging by the look in them I was glad I wasn’t him.

“Mr. Minton, what the fuck have you done to my trial?”

“Your -”

“Shut up and sit down. Both of you.”

We did as we were told. The judge composed herself and leaned forward across her desk. She was still looking at Minton.

“Who did the due diligence on this witness of yours?” she asked calmly. “Who did the background?”

“Uh, that would have-actually, we only did a background on him in L.A. County. There were no cautions, no flags. I checked his name on the computer but I didn’t use the initials.”

“How many times had he been used in this county before today?”

“Only one previous time in court. But he had given information on three other cases I could find. Nothing about Arizona came up.”

“Nobody thought to check to see if this guy had been anywhere else or used variations of his name?”

“I guess not. He was passed on to me by the original prosecutor on the case. I just assumed she had checked him out.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

The judge turned her eyes to me. I could have sat back and watched Minton go down but I wasn’t going to let him try to take Maggie McPherson with him.

“The original prosecutor was Maggie McPherson,” I said. “She had the case all of about three hours. She’s my ex-wife and she knew as soon as she saw me at first apps that she was gone. And you got the case that same day, Minton. Where in there was she supposed to background your witnesses, especially this guy who didn’t come out from under his rock until after first appearance? She passed him on and that was it.”

Minton opened his mouth to say something but the judge cut him off.

“It doesn’t matter who should have done it. It wasn’t done properly and, either way, putting that man on the stand in my opinion was gross prosecutorial misconduct.”

“Your Honor,” Minton barked. “I did -”

“Save it for your boss. He’s the one you’ll need to convince. What was the last offer the state made to Mr. Roulet?”

Minton seemed frozen and unable to respond. I answered for him.

“Simple assault, six months in county.”

The judge raised her eyebrows and looked at me.

“And you didn’t take it?”

I shook my head.

“My client won’t take a conviction. It will ruin him. He’ll gamble on a verdict.”

“You want a mistrial?” she asked.

I laughed and shook my head.

“No, I don’t want a mistrial. All that will do is give the prosecution time to clean up its mess, get it all right and then come back at us.”

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

“What do I want? A directed verdict would be nice. Something with no comebacks from the state. Other than that, we’ll ride it out.”

The judge nodded and clasped her hands together on the desk.

“A directed verdict would be ridiculous, Your Honor,” Minton said, finally finding his voice. “We’re at the end of trial, anyway. We might as well take it to a verdict. The jury deserves it. Just because one mistake was made by the state, there is no reason to subvert the whole process.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mr. Minton,” the judge said dismissively. “It’s not about what the jury deserves. And as far as I am concerned, one mistake like you have made is enough. I don’t want this kicked back at me by the Second and that is surely what they will do. Then I am holding the bag for your miscon -”

“I didn’t know Corliss’s background!” Minton said forcefully. “I swear to God I didn’t know.”

The intensity of his words brought a momentary silence to the chambers. But soon I slipped into the void.

“Just like you didn’t know about the knife, Ted?”

Fullbright looked from Minton to me and then back at Minton.

“What knife?” she asked.

Minton said nothing.

“Tell her,” I said.

Minton shook his head.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” he said.

“Then you tell me,” the judge said to me.

“Judge, if you wait on discovery from the DA, you might as well hang it up at the start,” I said. “Witnesses disappear, stories change, you can lose a case just sitting around waiting.”

“All right, so what about the knife?”

“I needed to move on this case. So I had my investigator go through the back door and get reports. It’s fair game. But they were waiting for him and they phonied up a report on the knife so I wouldn’t know about the initials. I didn’t know until I got the formal discovery packet.”

The judge formed a hard line with her lips.

“That was the police, not the DA’s office,” Minton said quickly.

“Thirty seconds ago you said you didn’t know what he was talking about,” Fullbright said. “Now suddenly you do. I don’t care who did it. Are you telling me that this did in fact occur?”

Minton reluctantly nodded.

“Yes, Your Honor. But I swear, I didn’t -”

“You know what this tells me?” the judge said, cutting him off. “It tells me that from start to finish the state has not played fair in this case. It doesn’t matter who did what or that Mr. Haller’s investigator may have been acting improperly. The state must be above that. And as evidenced today in my courtroom it has been anything but that.”

“Your Honor, that’s not -”

“No more, Mr. Minton. I think I’ve heard enough. I want you both to leave now. In half an hour I’ll take the bench and announce what we’ll do about this. I am not sure yet what that will be but no matter what I do, you aren’t going to like what I have to say, Mr. Minton. And I am directing you to have your boss, Mr. Smithson, in the courtroom with you to hear it.”

I stood up. Minton didn’t move. He still seemed frozen to the seat.

“I said you can go!” the judge barked.

FORTY-TWO

I followed Minton through the court clerk’s station and into the courtroom. It was empty except for Meehan, who sat at the bailiff’s desk. I took my briefcase off the defense table and headed toward the gate.

“Hey, Haller, wait a second,” Minton said, as he gathered files from the prosecution table.

I stopped at the gate and looked back.

“What?”

Minton came to the gate and pointed to the rear door of the courtroom.

“Let’s go out here.”

“My client is going to be waiting out there for me.”

“Just come here.”

He headed to the door and I followed. In the vestibule where I had confronted Roulet two days earlier Minton stopped to confront me. But he didn’t say anything. He was putting words together. I decided to push him even further.

“While you go get Smithson I think I’ll stop by the Times office on two and make sure the reporter down there knows there’ll be some fireworks up here in a half hour.”

“Look,” Minton sputtered. “We have to work this out.”

“We?”

“Just hold off on the Times, okay? Give me your cell number and give me ten minutes.”

“For what?”

“Let me go down to my office and see what I can do.”

“I don’t trust you, Minton.”

“Well, if you want what’s best for your client instead of a cheap headline, you’re going to have to trust me for ten minutes.”

I looked away from his face and acted like I was considering the offer. Finally, I looked back at him. Our faces were only two feet apart.

“You know, Minton, I could’ve put up with all your bullshit. The knife and the arrogance and everything else. I’m a pro and I have to live with that shit from prosecutors every day of my life. But when you tried to put Corliss on Maggie McPherson in there, that’s when I decided not to show you any mercy.”

“Look, I did nothing to intentionally -”

“Minton, look around. There’s nobody here but us. No cameras, no tape, no witnesses. Are you going to stand there and tell me you never heard of Corliss until a staff meeting yesterday?”

He responded by pointing an angry finger in my face.

“And you’re going to stand there and tell me you never heard of him until this morning?”

We stared at each other for a long moment.

“I may be green but I’m not stupid,” he said. “The strategy of your whole case was to push me toward using Corliss. You knew all along what you could do with him. And you probably got it from your ex.”

“If you can prove that, then prove it,” I said.

“Oh, don’t worry, I could… if I had the time. But all I’ve got is a half hour.”

I slowly raised my arm and checked my watch.

“More like twenty-six minutes.”

“Give me your cell number.”

I did and then he was gone. I waited in the vestibule for fifteen seconds before stepping through the door. Roulet was standing close to the glass wall that looked down at the plaza below. His mother and C. C. Dobbs were sitting on a bench against the opposite wall. Further down the hallway I saw Detective Sobel lingering in the hallway.

Roulet noticed me and started walking quickly toward me. Soon his mother and Dobbs followed.

“What’s going on?” Roulet asked first.

I waited until they were all gathered close to me before answering.

“I think it’s all about to blow up.”

“What do you mean?” Dobbs asked.

“The judge is considering a directed verdict. We’ll know pretty soon.”

“What is a directed verdict?” Mary Windsor asked.

“It’s when the judge takes it out of the jury’s hands and issues a verdict of acquittal. She’s hot because she says Minton engaged in misconduct with Corliss and some other things.”

“Can she do that? Just acquit him.”

“She’s the judge. She can do what she wants.”

“Oh my God!”

Windsor brought one hand to her mouth and looked like she might burst into tears.

“I said she is considering it,” I cautioned. “It doesn’t mean it will happen. But she did offer me a mistrial already and I turned that down flat.”

“You turned it down?” Dobbs yelped. “Why on earth did you do that?”

“Because it’s meaningless. The state could come right back and try Louis again-this time with a better case because they’ll know our moves. Forget the mistrial. We’re not going to educate the prosecution. We want something with no comebacks or we ride with this jury to a verdict today. Even if it goes against us we have solid grounds for appeal.”

“Isn’t that a decision for Louis to make?” Dobbs asked. “After all, he’s -”

“Cecil, shut up,” Windsor snapped. “Just shut up and stop second-guessing everything this man does for Louis. He’s right. We’re not going through this again!”

Dobbs looked like he had been slapped by her. He seemed to shrink back from the huddle. I looked at Mary Windsor and saw a different face. It was the face of the woman who had started a business from scratch and had taken it to the top. I also looked at Dobbs differently, realizing that he had probably been whispering sweet negatives about me in her ear all along.

I let it go and focused on what was at hand.

“There’s only one thing the DA’s office hates worse than losing a verdict,” I said. “That’s getting embarrassed by a judge with a directed verdict, especially after a finding of prosecutorial misconduct. Minton went down to talk to his boss and he’s a guy who is very political and always has his finger in the wind. We might know something in a few minutes.”

Roulet was directly in front of me. I looked over his shoulder to see that Sobel was still standing in the hallway. She was talking on a cell phone.

“Listen,” I said. “All of you just sit tight. If I don’t hear from the DA, then we go back into court in twenty minutes to see what the judge wants to do. So stay close. If you will excuse me, I’m going to go to the restroom.”

I stepped away from them and walked down the hallway toward Sobel. But Roulet broke away from his mother and her lawyer and caught up to me. He grabbed me by the arm to stop me.

“I still want to know how Corliss got that shit he was saying,” he demanded.

“What does it matter? It’s working for us. That’s what matters.”

Roulet brought his face in close to mine.

“The guy calls me a murderer on the stand. How is that working for us?”

“Because no one believed him. And that’s why the judge is so pissed, because they used a professional liar to get up there on the stand and say the worst things about you. To put that in front of the jury and then have the guy revealed as a liar, that’s the misconduct. Don’t you see? I had to heighten the stakes. It was the only way to push the judge into pushing the prosecution. I am doing exactly what you wanted me to do, Louis. I’m getting you off.”

I studied him as he computed this.

“So let it go,” I said. “Go back to your mother and Dobbs and let me go take a piss.”

He shook his head.

“No, I’m not going to let it go, Mick.”

He poked a finger into my chest.

“Something else is going on here, Mick, and I don’t like it. You have to remember something. I have your gun. And you have a daughter. You have to -”

I closed my hand over his hand and finger and pushed it away from my chest.

“Don’t you ever threaten my family,” I said with a controlled but angry voice. “You want to come at me, fine, then come at me and let’s do it. But if you ever threaten my daughter again, I will bury you so deep you will never be found. You understand me, Louis?”

He slowly nodded and a smile creased his face.

“Sure, Mick. Just so we understand each other.”

I released his hand and left him there. I started walking toward the end of the hallway where the restrooms were and where Sobel seemed to be waiting while talking on a cell. I was walking blind, my thoughts of the threat to my daughter crowding my vision. But as I got close to Sobel I shook it off. She ended her call when I got there.

“Detective Sobel,” I said.

“Mr. Haller,” she said.

“Can I ask why you are here? Are you going to arrest me?”

“I’m here because you invited me, remember?”

“Uh, no, I don’t.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“You told me I ought to check out your trial.”

I suddenly realized she was referring to the awkward conversation in my home office during the search of my house on Monday night.

“Oh, right, I forgot about that. Well, I’m glad you took me up on it. I saw your partner earlier. What happened to him?”

“Oh, he’s around.”

I tried to read something in that. She had not answered the question about whether she was going to arrest me. I gestured back up the hallway toward the courtroom.

“So what did you think?”

“Interesting. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the judge’s chambers.”

“Well, stick around. It ain’t over yet.”

“Maybe I will.”

My cell phone started to vibrate. I reached under my jacket and pulled it off my hip. The caller ID readout said the call was coming from the district attorney’s office.

“I have to take this,” I said.

“By all means,” Sobel said.

I opened the phone and started walking back up the hallway toward where Roulet was pacing.

“Hello?”

“Mickey Haller, this is Jack Smithson in the DA’s office. How’s your day going?”

“I’ve had better.”

“Not after you hear what I’m offering to do for you.”

“I’m listening.”

FORTY-THREE

The judge did not come out of chambers for fifteen minutes on top of the thirty she had promised. We were all waiting, Roulet and I at the defense table, his mother and Dobbs behind us in the first row. At the prosecution table Minton was no longer flying solo. Next to him sat Jack Smithson. I was thinking that it was probably the first time he had actually been inside a courtroom in a year.

Minton looked downcast and defeated. Sitting next to Smithson, he could have been taken as a defendant with his attorney. He looked guilty as charged.

Detective Booker was not in the courtroom and I wondered if he was working on something or simply if no one had bothered to call him with the bad news.

I turned to check the big clock on the back wall and to scan the gallery. The screen for Minton’s PowerPoint presentation was gone now, a hint of what was to come. I saw Sobel sitting in the back row, but her partner and Kurlen were still nowhere to be seen. There was nobody else but Dobbs and Windsor, and they didn’t count. The row reserved for the media was empty. The media had not been alerted. I was keeping my side of the deal with Smithson.

Deputy Meehan called the courtroom to order and Judge Fullbright took the bench with a flourish, the scent of lilac wafting toward the tables. I guessed that she’d had a cigarette or two back there in chambers and had gone heavy with the perfume as cover.

“In the matter of the state versus Louis Ross Roulet, I understand from my clerk that we have a motion.”

Minton stood.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

He said nothing further, as if he could not bring himself to speak.

“Well, Mr. Minton, are you sending it to me telepathically?”

“No, Your Honor.”

Minton looked down at Smithson and got the go-ahead nod.

“The state moves to dismiss all charges against Louis Ross Roulet.”

The judge nodded as though she had expected the move. I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me and knew it was from Mary Windsor. She knew what was going to happen but had held her emotions in check until she had actually heard it in the courtroom.

“Is that with or without prejudice?” the judge asked.

“Dismiss with prejudice.”

“Are you sure about that, Mr. Minton? That means no comebacks from the state.”

“Yes, Your Honor, I know,” Minton said with a note of annoyance at the judge’s need to explain the law to him.

The judge wrote something down and then looked back at Minton.

“I believe for the record the state needs to offer some sort of explanation for this motion. We have chosen a jury and heard more than two days of testimony. Why is the state doing this at this stage, Mr. Minton?”

Smithson stood. He was a tall and thin man with a pale complexion. He was a prosecutorial specimen. Nobody wanted a fat man as district attorney and that was exactly what he hoped one day to be. He wore a charcoal gray suit with what had become his trademark: a maroon bow tie with matching handkerchief peeking from the suit’s breast pocket. The word among the defense pros was that a political advisor had told him to start building a recognizable media image so that when the time came to run, the voters would think they already knew him. This was one situation where he didn’t want the media carrying his image to the voters.

“If I may, Your Honor,” he said.

“The record will note the appearance of Assistant District Attorney John Smithson, head of the Van Nuys Division. Welcome, Jack. Go right ahead, please.”

“Judge Fullbright, it has come to my attention that in the interest of justice, the charges against Mr. Roulet should be dropped.”

He pronounced Roulet’s name wrong.

“Is that all the explanation you can offer, Jack?” the judge asked.

Smithson deliberated before answering. While there were no reporters present, the record of the hearing would be public and his words viewable later.

“Judge, it has come to my attention that there were some irregularities in the investigation and subsequent prosecution. This office is founded upon the belief in the sanctity of our justice system. I personally safeguard that in the Van Nuys Division and take it very, very seriously. And so it is better for us to dismiss a case than to see justice possibly compromised in any way.”

“Thank you, Mr. Smithson. That is refreshing to hear.”

The judge wrote another note and then looked back down at us.

“The state’s motion is granted,” she said. “All charges against Louis Roulet are dismissed with prejudice. Mr. Roulet, you are discharged and free to go.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said.

“We still have a jury returning at one o’clock,” Fullbright said. “I will gather them and explain that the case has been resolved. If any of you attorneys wish to come back then, I am sure they will have questions for you. However, it is not required that you be back.”

I nodded but didn’t say I would be back. I wouldn’t be. The twelve people who had been so important to me for the last week had just dropped off the radar. They were now as meaningless to me as the drivers going the other way on the freeway. They had gone by and I was finished with them.

The judge left the bench and Smithson was the first one out of the courtroom. He had nothing to say to Minton or me. His first priority was to distance himself from this prosecutorial catastrophe. I looked over and saw Minton’s face had lost all color. I assumed that I would soon see his name in the yellow pages. He would not be retained by the DA and he would join the ranks of the defense pros, his first felony lesson a costly one.

Roulet was at the rail, leaning over to hug his mother. Dobbs had a hand on his shoulder in a congratulatory gesture, but the family lawyer had not recovered from Windsor ’s harsh rebuke in the hallway.

When the hugs were over, Roulet turned to me and with hesitation shook my hand.

“I wasn’t wrong about you,” he said. “I knew you were the one.”

“I want the gun,” I said, deadpan, my face showing no joy in the victory just achieved.

“Of course you do.”

He turned back to his mother. I hesitated a moment and then turned back to the defense table. I opened my briefcase to return all the files to it.

“Michael?”

I turned and it was Dobbs reaching a hand across the railing. I shook it and nodded.

“You did good,” Dobbs said, as if I needed to hear it from him. “We all appreciate it greatly.”

“Thanks for the shot. I know you were shaky about me at the start.”

I was courteous enough not to mention Windsor ’s outburst in the hallway and what she had said about him backstabbing me.

“Only because I didn’t know you,” Dobbs said. “Now I do. Now I know who to recommend to my clients.”

“Thank you. But I hope your kind of clients never need me.”

He laughed.

“Me, too!”

Then it was Mary Windsor’s turn. She extended her hand across the bar.

“Mr. Haller, thank you for my son.”

“You’re welcome,” I said flatly. “Take care of him.”

“I always do.”

I nodded.

“Why don’t you all go out to the hallway and I’ll be out in a minute. I have to finish up some things here with the clerk and Mr. Minton.”

I turned back to the table. I then went around it and approached the clerk.

“How long before I can get a signed copy of the judge’s order?”

“We’ll enter it this afternoon. We can send you a copy if you don’t want to come back.”

“That would be great. Could you also fax one?”

She said she would and I gave her the number to the fax in Lorna Taylor’s condominium. I wasn’t sure yet how it could be used but I had to believe that an order to dismiss could somehow help me get a client or two.

When I turned back to get my briefcase and leave I noticed that Detective Sobel had left the courtroom. Only Minton remained. He was standing and gathering his things.

“Sorry I never got the chance to see your PowerPoint thing,” I said.

He nodded.

“Yeah, it was pretty good. I think it would have won them over.”

I nodded.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. See if I can ride this out and somehow hold on to my job.”

He put his files under his arm. He had no briefcase. He only had to go down to the second floor. He turned and gave me a hard stare.

“The only thing I know is that I don’t want to cross the aisle. I don’t want to become like you, Haller. I think I like sleeping at night too much for that.”

With that he headed through the gate and strode out of the courtroom. I glanced over at the clerk to see if she had heard what he had said. She acted like she hadn’t.

I took my time following Minton out. I picked up my briefcase and turned backwards as I pushed through the gate. I looked at the judge’s empty bench and the state seal on the front panel. I nodded at nothing in particular and then walked out.

FORTY-FOUR

Roulet and his entourage were waiting for me in the hallway. I looked both ways and saw Sobel down by the elevators. She was on her cell phone and it seemed as though she was waiting for an elevator but it didn’t look like the down button was lit.

“Michael, can you join us for lunch?” Dobbs said upon seeing me. “We are going to celebrate!”

I noticed that he was now calling me by my given name. Victory made everybody friendly.

“Uh…,” I said, still looking down at Sobel. “I don’t think I can make it.”

“Why not? You obviously don’t have court in the afternoon.”

I finally looked at Dobbs. I felt like saying that I couldn’t have lunch because I never wanted to see him or Mary Windsor or Louis Roulet again.

“I think I’m going to stick around and talk to the jurors when they come back at one.”

“Why?” Roulet asked.

“Because it will help me to know what they were thinking and where we stood.”

Dobbs gave me a clap on the upper arm.

“Always learning, always getting better for the next one. I don’t blame you.”

He looked delighted that I would not be joining them. And for good reason. He probably wanted me out of the way now so he could work on repairing his relationship with Mary Windsor. He wanted that franchise account just to himself again.

I heard the muted bong of the elevator and looked back down the hall. Sobel was standing in front of the opening elevator. She was leaving.

But then Lankford, Kurlen and Booker stepped out of the elevator and joined Sobel. They turned and started walking toward us.

“Then we’ll leave you to it,” Dobbs said, his back to the approaching detectives. “We have a reservation at Orso and I’m afraid we’re already going to be late getting back over the hill.”

“Okay,” I said, still looking down the hall.

Dobbs, Windsor and Roulet turned to walk away just as the four detectives got to us.

“Louis Roulet,” Kurlen announced. “You are under arrest. Turn around, please, and place your hands behind your back.”

“No!” Mary Windsor shrieked. “You can’t -”

“What is this?” Dobbs cried out.

Kurlen didn’t answer or wait for Roulet to comply. He stepped forward and roughly turned Roulet around. As he made the forced turn, Roulet’s eyes came to mine.

“What’s going on, Mick?” he said in a calm voice. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

Mary Windsor moved toward her son.

“Take your hands off of my son!”

She grabbed Kurlen from behind but Booker and Lankford quickly moved in and detached her, handling her gently but strongly.

“Ma’am, step back,” Booker commanded. “Or I will put you in jail.”

Kurlen started giving Roulet the Miranda warning. Windsor stayed back but was not silent.

“How dare you? You cannot do this!”

Her body moved in place and she looked as though unseen hands were keeping her from charging at Kurlen again.

“Mother,” Roulet said in a tone that carried more weight and control than any of the detectives.

Windsor ’s body relented. She gave up. But Dobbs didn’t.

“You’re arresting him for what?” he demanded.

“Suspicion of murder,” Kurlen said. “The murder of Martha Renteria.”

“That’s impossible!” Dobbs cried. “Everything that witness Corliss said in there was proven to be a lie. Are you crazy? The judge dismissed the case because of his lies.”

Kurlen broke from his recital of Roulet’s rights and looked at Dobbs.

“If it was all a lie, how’d you know he was talking about Martha Renteria?”

Dobbs realized his mistake and took a step back from the gathering. Kurlen smiled.

“Yeah, I thought so,” he said.

He grabbed Roulet by an elbow and turned him back around.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Mick?” Roulet said.

“Detective Kurlen,” I said. “Can I talk to my client for a moment?”

Kurlen looked at me, seemed to measure something in me and then nodded.

“One minute. Tell him to behave himself and it will all go a lot easier for him.”

He shoved Roulet toward me. I took him by one arm and walked him a few paces away from the others so we would have privacy if we kept our voices down. I stepped close to him and began in a whisper.

“This is it, Louis. This is good-bye. I got you off. Now you’re on your own. Get yourself a new lawyer.”

The shock showed in his eyes. Then his face clouded over with a tightly focused anger. It was pure rage and I realized it was the same rage Regina Campo and Martha Renteria must have seen.

“I won’t need a lawyer,” he said to me. “You think they can make a case off of what you somehow fed to that lying snitch in there? You better think again.”

“They won’t need the snitch, Louis. Believe me, they’ll find more. They probably already have more.”

“What about you, Mick? Aren’t you forgetting something? I have -”

“I know. But it doesn’t matter anymore. They don’t need my gun. They’ve already got all they need. But whatever happens to me, I’ll know that I put you down. At the end, after the trial and all the appeals, when they finally stick that needle in your arm, that will be me, Louis. Remember that.”

I smiled with no humor and moved in closer.

“This is for Raul Levin. You might not go down for him but make no mistake, you are going down.”

I let that register for a moment and then stepped back and nodded to Kurlen. He and Booker came up on either side of Roulet and took hold of his upper arms.

“You set me up,” Roulet said, somehow maintaining his calm. “You aren’t a lawyer. You work for them.”

“Let’s go,” Kurlen said.

They started moving him but he shook them off momentarily and put his raging eyes right back into mine.

“This isn’t the end, Mick,” he said. “I’ll be out by tomorrow morning. What will you do then? Think about it. What are you going to do then? You can’t protect everybody.”

They took a tighter hold of him and roughly turned him toward the elevators. This time Roulet went without a struggle. Halfway down the hall toward the elevator, his mother and Dobbs trailing behind, he turned his head to look back over his shoulder at me. He smiled and it sent something right through me.

You can’t protect everybody.

A cold shiver of fear pierced my chest.

Someone was waiting for the elevator and it opened just as the entourage got there. Lankford signaled the person back and took the elevator. Roulet was hustled in. Dobbs and Windsor were about to follow when they were halted by Lankford’s hand extended in a stop signal. The elevator door started to close and Dobbs angrily and impotently pushed on the button next to it.

My hope was that it would be the last I would ever see of Louis Roulet, but the fear stayed locked in my chest, fluttering like a moth caught inside a porch light. I turned away and almost walked right into Sobel. I hadn’t noticed that she had stayed behind the others.

“You have enough, don’t you?” I said. “Tell me you wouldn’t have moved so quickly if you didn’t have enough to keep him.”

She looked at me a long moment before answering.

“We won’t decide that. The DA will. Probably depends on what they get out of him in interrogation. But up till now he’s had a pretty smart lawyer. He probably knows not to say a word to us.”

“Then why didn’t you wait?”

“Wasn’t my call.”

I shook my head. I wanted to tell her that they had moved too fast. It wasn’t part of the plan. I wanted to plant the seed, that’s all. I wanted them to move slowly and get it right.

The moth fluttered inside and I looked down at the floor. I couldn’t shake the idea that all of my machinations had failed, leaving me and my family exposed in the hard-eyed focus of a killer. You can’t protect everybody.

It was as if Sobel read my fears.

“But we’re going to try to keep him,” she said. “We have what the snitch said in court and the ticket. We’re working on witnesses and the forensics.”

My eyes came up to hers.

“What ticket?”

A look of suspicion entered her face.

“I thought you had it figured out. We put it together as soon as the snitch mentioned the snake dancer.”

“Yeah. Martha Renteria. I got that. But what ticket? What are you talking about?”

I had moved in too close to her and Sobel took a step back from me. It wasn’t my breath. It was my desperation.

“I don’t know if I should tell you, Haller. You’re a defense lawyer. You’re his lawyer.”

“Not anymore. I just quit.”

“Doesn’t matter. He -”

“Look, you just took that guy down because of me. I might get disbarred because of it. I might even go to jail for a murder I didn’t commit. What ticket are you talking about?”

She hesitated and I waited, but then she finally spoke.

“Raul Levin’s last words. He said he found Jesus’s ticket out.”

“Which means what?”

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“Look, just tell me. Please.”

She relented.

“We traced Levin’s most recent movements. Before he was murdered he had made inquiries about Roulet’s parking tickets. He even pulled hard copies of them. We inventoried what he had in the office and eventually compared it with what’s on the computer. He was missing one ticket. One hard copy. We didn’t know if his killer took it that day or if he had just missed pulling it. So we went and pulled a copy ourselves. It was issued two years ago on the night of April eighth. It was a citation for parking in front of a hydrant in the sixty-seven-hundred block of Blythe Street in Panorama City.”

It all came together for me, like the last bit of sand dropping through the middle of an hourglass. Raul Levin really had found Jesus Menendez’s salvation.

“Martha Renteria was murdered two years ago on April eighth,” I said. “She lived on Blythe in Panorama City.”

“Yes, but we didn’t know that. We didn’t see the connection. You told us that Levin was working separate cases for you. Jesus Menendez and Louis Roulet were separate investigations. Levin had them filed that way, too.”

“It was a discovery issue. He kept the cases separate so I wouldn’t have to turn over anything on Roulet that he came up with on Menendez.”

“One of your lawyer angles. Well, it stopped us from putting it together until that snitch in there mentioned the snake dancer. That connected everything.”

I nodded.

“So whoever killed Raul Levin took the hard copy?”

“We think.”

“Did you check Raul’s phones for a tap? Somehow somebody knew he found the ticket.”

“We did. They were clear. Bugs could have been removed at the time of the murder. Or maybe it was someone else’s phone that was tapped.”

Meaning mine. Meaning it might explain how Roulet knew so many of my moves and was even conveniently waiting for me in my home the night I had come home from seeing Jesus Menendez.

“I will have them checked,” I said. “Does all of this mean I am clear on Raul’s murder?”

“Not necessarily,” Sobel said. “We still want to see what comes back from ballistics. We’re hoping for something today.”

I nodded. I didn’t know how to respond. Sobel lingered, looking like she wanted to tell me or ask me something.

“What?” I said.

“I don’t know. Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“I don’t know. There’s nothing to tell.”

“Really? In the courtroom it seemed like you were trying to tell us a lot.”

I was silent a moment, trying to read between the lines.

“What do you want from me, Detective Sobel?”

“You know what I want. I want Raul Levin’s killer.”

“Well, so do I. But I couldn’t give you Roulet on Levin even if I wanted to. I don’t know how he did it. And that’s off the record.”

“So that still leaves you in the crosshairs.”

She looked down the hall at the elevators, her implication clear. If the ballistics matched, I could still have a problem on Levin. They would use it as leverage. Give up how Roulet did it or go down for it myself. I changed the subject.

“How long do you think before Jesus Menendez gets out?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Hard to say. Depends on the case they build against Roulet-if they have a case. But I know one thing. They can’t prosecute Roulet as long as another man is in prison for the same crime.”

I turned and walked over to the glass wall. I put my free hand on the railing that ran along the glass. I felt a mixture of elation and dread and that moth still batting around in my chest.

“That’s all I care about,” I said quietly. “Getting him out. That and Raul.”

She came over and stood next to me.

“I don’t know what you are doing,” she said. “But leave the rest for us.”

“I do that and your partner will probably put me in jail for a murder I didn’t commit.”

“You are playing a dangerous game,” she said. “Leave it alone.”

I looked at her and then back down at the plaza.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll leave it alone now.”

Having heard what she needed to, she made a move to go.

“Good luck,” she said.

I looked at her again.

“Same to you.”

She left then and I stayed. I turned back to the window and looked down into the plaza. I saw Dobbs and Windsor crossing the concrete squares and heading toward the parking garage. Mary Windsor was leaning against her lawyer for support. I doubted they were still headed to lunch at Orso.

FORTY-FIVE

By that night the word had begun to spread. Not the secret details but the public story. The story that I had won the case, gotten a DA’s motion to dismiss with no comebacks, only to have my client arrested for a murder in the hallway outside the courtroom where I had just cleared him. I got calls from every other defense pro I knew. I got call after call until my cell phone finally died. My colleagues were all congratulating me. In their eyes, there was no downside. Roulet was the ultimate franchise. I got schedule A fees for one trial and then I would get schedule A fees for the next one. It was a double-dip most defense pros could only dream about. And, of course, when I told them I would not be handling the defense of the new case, each one of them asked if I could refer him to Roulet.

It was the one call that came in on my home line that I wanted the most. It was from Maggie McPherson.

“I’ve been waiting for your call all night,” I said.

I was pacing in the kitchen, tethered by the phone cord. I had checked my phones when I had gotten home and found no evidence of bugging devices.

“Sorry, I’ve been in the conference room,” she said.

“I heard you were pulled in on Roulet.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m calling. They’re going to cut him loose.”

“What are you talking about? They’re letting him go?”

“Yes. They’ve had him for nine hours in a room and he hasn’t broken. Maybe you taught him too well not to talk, because he’s a rock and they got nothing and that means they don’t have enough.”

“You’re wrong. There is enough. They have the parking ticket and there have to be witnesses who can put him in The Cobra Room. Even Menendez can ID him there.”

“You know as well as I do that Menendez is a scratch. He’d identify anybody to get out. And if there are other wits from The Cobra Room, then it’s going to take some time to run them down. The parking ticket puts him in the neighborhood but it doesn’t put him inside her apartment.”

“What about the knife?”

“They’re working on it but that’s going to take time, too. Look, we want to do this right. It was Smithson’s call and, believe me, he wanted to keep him, too. It would make that fiasco you created in court today a little more palatable. But it’s just not there. Not yet. They’re going to kick him loose and work the forensics and look for the witnesses. If Roulet’s good for this, then we will get him, and your other client will get out. You don’t have to worry. But we have to do it right.”

I swung a fist impotently through the air.

“They jumped the gun. Damn it, they shouldn’t have made the move today.”

“I guess they thought nine hours in interrogation would do the trick.”

“They were stupid.”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

I was annoyed by her attitude but held my tongue on that. I needed her to keep me in the loop.

“When exactly will they let him go?” I asked.

“I don’t know. This all just went down. Kurlen and Booker came over here to present it and Smithson just sent them back to the PD. When they get back, I assume they’ll kick him loose.”

“Listen to me, Maggie. Roulet knows about Hayley.”

There was a horribly long moment of silence before she answered.

“What are you saying, Haller? You let our daughter into -”

“I didn’t let anything happen. He broke into my house and saw her picture. It doesn’t mean he knows where she lives or even what her name is. But he knows about her and he wants to get back at me. So you have to go home right now. I want you to be with Hayley. Get her and get out of the apartment. Just play it safe.”

Something made me hold back on telling her everything, that I felt that Roulet had specifically threatened my family in the courthouse. You can’t protect everybody. I would only use that if she refused to do what I wanted her to do with Hayley.

“I’m leaving now,” she said. “And we’re coming to you.”

I knew she would say that.

“No, don’t come to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because he might come to me.”

“This is crazy. What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet. Just go get Hayley and get somewhere safe. Then call me on your cell, but don’t tell me where you are. It will be better if I don’t even know.”

“Haller, just call the police. They can -”

“And tell them what?”

“I don’t know. Tell them you’ve been threatened.”

“A defense lawyer telling the police he feels threatened… yeah, they’ll jump all over that. Probably send out a SWAT team.”

“Well, you have to do something.”

“I thought I did. I thought he was going to be in jail for the rest of his life. But you people moved too fast and now you have to let him go.”

“I told you, it wasn’t enough. Even knowing now about the possible threat to Hayley, it’s still not enough.”

“Then go to our daughter and take care of her. Leave the rest to me.”

“I’m going.”

But she didn’t hang up. It was like she was giving me the chance to say something more.

“I love you, Mags,” I said. “Both of you. Be careful.”

I closed the phone before she could respond. Almost immediately I opened it again and called Fernando Valenzuela’s cell phone number. After five rings he answered.

“Val, it’s me, Mick.”

“Shit. If I’d known it was you I wouldn’t have answered.”

“Look, I need your help.”

“My help? You’re asking for my help after what you asked me the other night? After you accused me?”

“Look, Val, this is an emergency. What I said the other night was out of line and I apologize. I’ll pay for your TV, I’ll do whatever you want, but I need your help right now.”

I waited. After a pause he responded.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Roulet still has the bracelet on his ankle, right?”

“That’s right. I know what happened in court but I haven’t heard from the guy. One of my courthouse people said the cops picked him up again so I don’t know what’s going on.”

“They picked him up but he’s about to be kicked loose. He’ll probably be calling you so he can get the bracelet taken off.”

“I’m already home, man. He can find me in the morning.”

“That’s what I want. Make him wait.”

“That ain’t no favor, man.”

“This is. I want you to open your laptop and watch him. When he leaves the PD, I want to know where he’s going. Can you do that for me?”

“You mean right now?”

“Yeah, right now. You got a problem with that?”

“Sort of.”

I got ready for another argument. But I was surprised.

“I told you about the battery alarm on the bracelet, right?” Valenzuela said.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I got the twenty percent alarm about an hour ago.”

“So how much longer can you track him until the battery’s dead?”

“Probably about six to eight hours’ active tracking before it goes on low pulse. Then he’ll come up every fifteen minutes for another five hours.”

I thought about all of this. I just needed to make it through the night and to know that Maggie and Hayley were safe.

“The thing is, when he is on low pulse he beeps,” Valenzuela said. “You’ll hear him coming. Or he’ll get tired of the noise and juice the battery.”

Or maybe he’ll pull the Houdini act again, I thought.

“Okay,” I said. “You told me that there were other alarms that you could build into the tracking program.”

“That’s right.”

“Can you set it so you get an alarm if he comes near a specific target?”

“Yeah, like if it’s on a child molester you can set an alarm if he gets close to a school. Stuff like that. It’s got to be a fixed target.”

“Okay.”

I gave him the address of the apartment on Dickens in Sherman Oaks where Maggie and my daughter lived.

“If he comes within ten blocks of that place you call me. Doesn’t matter what time, call me. That’s the favor.”

“What is this place?”

“It’s where my daughter lives.”

There was a long silence before Valenzuela responded.

“With Maggie? You think this guy’s going to go there?”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping that as long as he’s got the tracker on his ankle he won’t be stupid.”

“Okay, Mick. You got it.”

“Thanks, Val. And call my home number. My cell is dead.”

I gave him the number and then was silent for a moment, wondering what else I could say to make up for my betrayal two nights earlier. Finally, I let it go. I had to focus on the current threat.

I moved from the kitchen and down the hallway to my office. I rolled through the Rolodex on my desk until I found a number and then grabbed the desk phone.

I dialed and waited. I looked out the window to the left of my desk and noticed for the first time that it was raining. It looked like it was going to come down hard and I wondered if the weather would affect the satellite tracking of Roulet. I dropped the thought when my call was answered by Teddy Vogel, the leader of the Road Saints.

“Speak to me.”

“Ted, Mickey Haller.”

“Counselor, how are you?”

“Not so good tonight.”

“Then I am glad you called. What can I do for you?”

I looked out the window at the rain before answering. I knew that if I continued I would be indebted to people I never wanted to be on the hook with.

But there was no choice.

“You happen to have anybody down my way tonight?” I asked.

There was a hesitation before Vogel answered. I knew he had to be curious about his lawyer calling him for help. I was obviously asking about the kind of help that came with muscles and guns.

“Got a few guys watching things at the club. What’s up?”

The club was the strip bar on Sepulveda, not too far from Sherman Oaks. I was counting on that.

“There’s a threat to my family, Ted. I need some warm bodies to put up a front, maybe grab a guy if needed.”

“Armed and dangerous?”

I hesitated but not too long.

“Yeah, armed and dangerous.”

“Sounds like our kind of move. Where do you want them?”

He was immediately ready to act. He knew the value of having me under his thumb instead of on retainer. I gave him the address of the apartment on Dickens. I also gave him a description of Roulet and what he had been wearing in court that day.

“If he shows up at that apartment, I want him stopped,” I said. “And I need your people to go now.”

“Done,” Vogel said.

“Thank you, Ted.”

“No, thank you. We’re glad to help you out, seeing as how you’ve helped us out so much.”

Yeah, right, I thought. I hung the phone up, knowing I had just crossed one of those lines you hope to never see let alone have to step across. I looked out the window again. Outside, the rain was now coming down hard off the roof. I had no gutter in the back and it was coming down in a translucent sheet that blurred the lights out there. Nothing but rain this year, I thought. Nothing but rain.

I left the office and went back to the front of the house. On the table in the dining alcove was the gun Earl Briggs had given me. I contemplated the weapon and all the moves I had made. The bottom line was I had been flying blind and in the process had endangered more than just myself.

Panic started to set in. I grabbed the phone off the kitchen wall and called Maggie’s cell. She answered right away. I could tell she was in her car.

“Where are you?”

“I’m just getting home now. I’ll get some things together and we’ll get out.”

“Good.”

“What do I tell Hayley, that her father put her life in danger?”

“It’s not like that, Maggie. It’s him. It’s Roulet. I couldn’t control him. One night I came home and he was sitting in my house. He’s a real estate guy. He knows how to find places. He saw her picture on my desk. What was I -”

“Can we talk about this later? I have to go in now and get my daughter.”

Not our daughter. My daughter.

“Sure. Call me when you’re in a new place.”

She disconnected without further word and I slowly hung the phone back on the wall. My hand was still on the phone. I leaned forward until my forehead touched the wall. I was out of moves. I could only wait on Roulet to make the next one.

The phone’s ring startled me and I jumped back. The phone fell to the floor and I pulled it up by the cord. It was Valenzuela.

“You get my message? I just called.”

“No, I’ve been on the phone. What?”

“Glad I called back, then. He’s moving.”

“Where?”

I shouted it too loud into the phone. I was losing it.

“He’s heading south on Van Nuys. He called me and said he wanted to lose the bracelet. I told him I was already home and that he could call me tomorrow. I told him he had better juice the battery so he wouldn’t start beeping in the middle of the night.”

“Good thinking. Where’s he now?”

“Still on Van Nuys.”

I tried to build an image of Roulet driving. If he was going south on Van Nuys that meant he was heading directly toward Sherman Oaks and the neighborhood where Maggie and Hayley lived. But he could also be headed right through Sherman Oaks on his way south over the hill and to his home. I had to wait to be sure.

“How up to the moment is the GPS on that thing?” I asked.

“It’s real time, man. This is where he’s at. He just crossed under the one-oh-one. He might be just going home, Mick.”

“I know, I know. Just wait till he crosses Ventura. The next street is Dickens. If he turns there, then he’s not going home.”

I stood up and didn’t know what to do. I started pacing, the phone pressed tightly to my ear. I knew that even if Teddy Vogel had immediately put his men in motion they were still minutes away. They were no good to me now.

“What about the rain? Does it affect the GPS?”

“It’s not supposed to.”

“That’s comforting.”

“He stopped.”

“Where?”

“Must be a light. I think that’s Moorpark Avenue there.”

That was a block before Ventura and two before Dickens. I heard a beeping sound come over the phone.

“What’s that?”

“The ten-block alarm you asked me to set.”

The beeping sound stopped.

“I turned it off.”

“I’ll call you right back.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I hung up and called Maggie’s cell. She answered right away.

“Where are you?”

“You told me not to tell you.”

“You’re out of the apartment?”

“No, not yet. Hayley’s picking the crayons and coloring books she wants to take.”

“Goddamn it, get out of there! Now!”

“We’re going as fast as -”

“Just get out! I’ll call you back. Make sure you answer.”

I hung up and called Valenzuela back.

“Where is he?”

“He’s now at Ventura. Must’ve caught another light, because he’s not moving.”

“You’re sure he’s on the road and not just parked there?”

“No, I’m not sure. He could-never mind, he’s moving. Shit, he turned on Ventura.”

“Which way?”

I started pacing, the phone pressed so hard against my ear that it hurt.

“Right-uh, west. He’s going west.”

He was now driving parallel to Dickens, one block away, in the direction of my daughter’s apartment.

“He just stopped again,” Valenzuela announced. “It’s not an intersection. It looks like he’s in the middle of the block. I think he parked it.”

I ran my free hand through my hair like a desperate man.

“Fuck it, I’ve gotta go. My cell’s dead. Call Maggie and tell her he’s heading her way. Tell her to just get in the car and get out of there!”

I shouted Maggie’s number into the phone and dropped it as I headed out of the kitchen. I knew it would take me a minimum of twenty minutes to get to Dickens-and that was hitting the curves on Mulholland at sixty in the Lincoln -but I couldn’t stand around shouting orders on the phone while my family was in danger. I grabbed the gun off the table and went to the door. I was shoving it into the side pocket of my jacket as I opened the door.

Mary Windsor was standing there, her hair wet from the rain.

“Mary, what -”

She raised her hand. I looked down to see the metal glint of the gun in it just as she fired.

FORTY-SIX

The sound was loud and the flash as bright as a camera’s. The impact of the bullet tearing into me was like what I imagine a kick from a horse would feel like. In a split second I went from standing still to moving backwards. I hit the wood floor hard and was propelled into the wall next to the living room fireplace. I tried to reach both hands to the hole in my gut but my right hand was hung up in the pocket of my jacket. I held myself with the left and tried to sit up.

Mary Windsor stepped forward and into the house. I had to look up at her. Through the open door behind her I could see the rain coming down. She raised the weapon and pointed it at my forehead. In a flash moment my daughter’s face came to me and I knew I wasn’t going to let her go.

“You tried to take my son from me!” Windsor shouted. “Did you think I could allow you to do that and just walk away?”

And then I knew. Everything crystallized. I knew she had said similar words to Raul Levin before she had killed him. And I knew that there had been no rape in an empty house in Bel-Air. She was a mother doing what she had to do. Roulet’s words came back to me then. You’re right about one thing. I am a son of a bitch.

And I knew, too, that Raul Levin’s last gesture had not been to make the sign of the devil, but to make the letter M or W, depending on how you looked at it.

Windsor took another step toward me.

“You go to hell,” she said.

She steadied her hand to fire. I raised my right hand, still wrapped in my jacket. She must have thought it was a defensive gesture because she didn’t hurry. She was savoring the moment. I could tell. Until I fired.

Mary Windsor’s body jerked backwards with the impact and she landed on her back in the threshold of the door. Her gun clattered to the floor and I heard her make a high-pitched whining noise. Then I heard the sound of running feet on the steps up to the front deck.

“Police!” a woman shouted. “Put your weapons down!”

I looked through the door and didn’t see anyone.

“Put your weapons down and come out with your hands in full view!”

This time it was a man who had yelled and I recognized the voice.

I pulled the gun out of my jacket pocket and put it on the floor. I slid it away from me.

“The weapon’s down,” I called out, as loud as the hole in my stomach allowed me to. “But I’m shot. I can’t get up. We’re both shot.”

I first saw the barrel of a pistol come into view in the doorway. Then a hand and then a wet black raincoat containing Detective Lankford. He moved into the house and was quickly followed by his partner, Detective Sobel. Lankford kicked the gun away from Windsor as he came in. He kept his own weapon pointed at me.

“Anybody else in the house?” he asked loudly.

“No,” I said. “Listen to me.”

I tried to sit up but pain shot through my body and Lankford yelled.

“Don’t move! Just stay there!”

“Listen to me. My fam -”

Sobel yelled a command into a handheld radio, ordering paramedics and ambulance transport for two people with gunshot wounds.

“One transport,” Lankford corrected. “She’s gone.”

He pointed his gun at Windsor.

Sobel shoved the radio into her raincoat pocket and came to me. She knelt down and pulled my hand away from my wound. She pulled my shirt out of my pants so she could lift it and see the damage. She then pressed my hand back down on the bullet hole.

“Press down as hard as you can. It’s a bleeder. You hear me, hold your hand down tight.”

“Listen to me,” I said again. “My family’s in danger. You have to -”

“Hold on.”

She reached inside her raincoat and pulled a cell phone off her belt. She flipped it open and hit a speed-dial button. Whoever she called answered right away.

“It’s Sobel. You better bring him back in. His mother just tried to hit the lawyer. He got her first.”

She listened for a moment and asked, “Then, where is he?”

She listened some more and then said good-bye. I stared at her as she closed her phone.

“They’ll pick him up. Your daughter is safe.”

“You’re watching him?”

She nodded.

“We piggy-backed on your plan, Haller. We have a lot on him but we were hoping for more. I told you, we want to clear Levin. We were hoping that if we kicked him loose he’d show us his trick, show us how he got to Levin. But the mother sort of just solved that mystery for us.”

I understood. Even with the blood and life running out of the hole in my gut I was able to put it together. Releasing Roulet had been a play. They were hoping that he’d go after me, revealing the method he had used to defeat the GPS ankle bracelet when he had killed Raul Levin. Only he hadn’t killed Raul. His mother had done it for him.

“Maggie?” I asked weakly.

Sobel shook her head.

“She’s fine. She had to play along because we didn’t know if Roulet had a tap on your line or not. She couldn’t tell you that she and Hayley were safe.”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t know whether just to be thankful that they were okay or to be angry that Maggie had used her daughter’s father as bait for a killer.

I tried to sit up.

“I want to call her. She -”

“Don’t move. Just stay still.”

I leaned my head back on the floor. I was cold and on the verge of shaking, yet I also felt as though I were sweating. I could feel myself getting weaker as my breathing grew shallow.

Sobel pulled the radio out of her pocket again and asked dispatch for an ETA on the paramedics. The dispatcher reported back that the medical help was still six minutes away.

“Hang in there,” Sobel said to me. “You’ll be all right. Depending on what the bullet did inside, you should be all right.”

“Gray…”

I meant to say great with full sarcasm attached. But I was fading.

Lankford came up next to Sobel and looked at me. In a gloved hand he held up the gun Mary Windsor had shot me with. I recognized the pearl grips. Mickey Cohen’s gun. My gun. The gun she shot Raul with.

He nodded and I took it as some sort of signal. Maybe that in his eyes I had stepped up, that he knew I had done their work by drawing the killer out. Maybe it was even the offering of a truce and maybe he wouldn’t hate lawyers so much after this.

Probably not. But I nodded back at him and the small movement made me cough. I tasted something in my mouth and knew it was blood.

“Don’t flatline on us now,” Lankford ordered. “If we end up giving a defense lawyer mouth-to-mouth, we’ll never live it down.”

He smiled and I smiled back. Or tried to. Then the blackness started crowding my vision. Pretty soon I was floating in it.